Brazil - A history in pictures



An online guide with a wealth of photos and illustrations giving a unique insight into the history of Brazil.

Links to the Illustrated Guide to Brazil can be found at the end of each section of the digital edition of the epic of Brazil enhancing the reader's enjoyment of a spellbinding saga "with the look and feel of an enchanted virgin forest, a totally new and original world for the reader-explorer to discover."

Brazil is the first work of fiction to depict five centuries of a great nation's remarkable history. With a stunning cast of real and fictional characters, this unforgettable epic unfolds in South America, Africa and Europe.



Brazil has a large cast of characters. The Cavalcantis of Santo Tomás and the da Silvas of Itatinga and most of the incidents involving these families are fictional. Aruanã, Secundus Proot, Black Peter, the Ferreiras, Patient Anthony, Armand Beauchamp, Henrique Inglez, Bábá Epifánia – these, too, are imaginary characters. 

King Afonso I of the Kongo; Nóbrega and Anchieta; Tomé de Sousa; Mem de Sá; Raposo Tavares; Johan Maurits; “Ganga Zumba;” Pombal; Tiradentes; Pedro II; Francisco Solano López; Eliza Alicia Lynch; Joaquim Nabuco; Anthony, the Counselor; Juscelino Kubitschek; Vilas Boas; Herbert “Betinho” de Sousa – these are real characters and what is said of them relates to recorded history.




Brazil - The epic of a great nation

Brazil - A writer in search of the heart and soul of a great nation




I searched for the story of Brazil for five years, a literary pathfinder wandering in quest of the untold saga of the Brazilians and their epic history.

In these pages, I share my mighty journey of twenty thousand kilometers across the length and breadth of Brazil in 1981. I traveled through the heart of a nation in which the flame of freedom was newly lit after years of military dictatorship, the journal I kept colored by the voices and emotions of the era.

I explore the exhaustive processes that go into the making of a novel with a first draft of three-quarters of million words written in the old-fashioned way, by hand. I reveal the early genesis of my ideas for plot lines and characters, the detailed planning of my outline. 

Of all the accolades a writer could hope for at the end of an epic work like Brazil none brought more joy than a simple question asked by the famed Brazilian historian and sociologist Gilberto Freyre.

"I should like to know if Uys had an unpublished jornal intime of a Brazilian family?"

There was no private journal, just the will to understand the Brazilian "thing" and a passion for writing and storytelling, which lies at the heart of every good novel.

Brazil - The epic of a great nation