About the Author

Rubem Fonseca is considered one of Brazil's most influential writers, and was awarded the Prémio Camões—considered the Nobel Prize of Portuguese language literature—for his body of work in 2003. That same year he was awarded the Juan Rulfo Prize.

Clifford E. Landers has translated many of the great writers of Brazil, including Jorge Amado, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Patricia Melo, Osman Lins, and Moacyr Scliar among others. He received the Mario Ferreira Award in 1999.

Reviews

"The Taker is like a blast to the head—here is a dark, sinister Rio de Janeiro, populated by street urchins, stalkers and serial killers. What sort of urban hell have we stumbled into? ... Short, fragmented vignettes that ring with the hard-boiled edge of crime fiction."—Anderson Tepper, Time Out New York

"Rubem Fonseca writes like the maniacal dreamchild of Cortazar and Bukowski. Crazed, ribald, and relentless, the stories in The Taker roam the streets of Rio like their disturbed characters, overwhelmed by the strangeness of life."—Stewart O'Nan

"Fonseca's work confirms, in the final analysis, that as a writer he has gone where none have dared in Brazilian literature."—World Literature Today

"[Fonseca's narratives] take advantage of and reinvent existing popular literary forms, such as the crime novel, but also the political, social, existential and erotic novel."—2003 Juan Rulfo Prize Jury