Casa Grande e Senzala [The Masters and the Slaves]

NOTE: This audiobook is in Portuguese.

When Gilberto Freyre published his most important book, The Masters and the Slaves (Casa Grande e Senzala), in 1933, it created a sensation in Brazil and later around the world. In this sociological study, Freyre looked back to the colonial period, when Portuguese colonizers lived with their black slaves on huge sugar plantations. This co-existence, together with the sexual promiscuity of the Portuguese and the Africans, created a unique society in which races mingled and inter-married freely -- a very different society from what Freyre had observed in Europe, the United States and Africa. Written in creative and innovative language, using unorthodox methods of research, Casa Grande e Senzala is a great interpretive essay on Brazil. The book is here examined by Roberto Ventura, who is a professor of literary theory and literature.

Original Portuguese description:

Escrito em uma linguagem criativa e inovadora, com metodos de pesquisa pouco ortodoxos e ideias anti-racistas que desafiaram os preconceitos da epoca, Casa Grande and Senzala (1933) e um grande ensaio de interpretac?o do Brasil.Trata-se, para o antropologo Darcy Ribeiro, da maior obra ja escrita no pais. Este livro abre caminhos para a leitura de Casa Grande and Senzala, abordando ainda as trajetorias controversas e conservadoras, irreverentes e saudosistas do seu autor, Gilberto Freyre (1900-87). Roberto Ventura e professor de teoria literaria e literatura comparada na USP. E autor de Estilo Tropical, entre outros livros.