Phenotypes - Reading Guide
Explore our guide to Phenotypes, which the judges thought was a ‘remarkably open and honest study of race’ and find out what personal experiences drove the author to write it.
Paulo Scott delivers a smart and stylish account of the bigotry lurking in hearts and institutions alike. Translated by Daniel Hahn.
In this complex tale, two very different brothers of mixed Black and white heritage are divided by the colour of their skin, as racial tension rises in society and a guilty secret resurfaces from their shared past.
Paulo Scott here probes the old wounds of race in Brazil, and in particular the loss of a black identity independent from the history of slavery. Exploratory rather than didactic, a story of crime, street-life and regret as much as a satirical novel of ideas, Phenotypes is a seething masterpiece of rage and reconciliation.
Paulo Scott
About the Author
Paulo Scott has published four books of fiction and four of poetry. He also translates from English.
Daniel Hahn
About the Translator
Daniel Hahn is an award-winning writer, editor and translator.Paulo Scott on Phenotypes
‘I come from Southern Brazil, which is a very racist region. My family is black, upper-middle class—you know, the kind of family that is in a position to speak out against this racism. So I took the truth of my family to create fiction. My brother is black—real black—and I have this lighter skin. But I see myself as a black man. My mother might deny it now, but as I remember, she always said that we were a black family.
‘I think that this book is both one of anger and of self-reflection. The protagonist found a place in the heart of anger to build a very specific story for himself, then at some point, he got lost in this fight against racism. He believed himself to be really strong, he saw his father as a very strong man, and he thought that his father’s power was in this anger, his rage against the world—but it wasn’t. Instead, the fact is that his father could understand the complexity of racism, like [Martin Luther] King [Jr.].
‘There is a connection between the members of this family: father, grandfather, son, and granddaughter—Roberta, the niece of the protagonist. They are almost the same entity, as three different movements of the same vision. The story ends with Roberta sleeping in the back seat of the car because she’s the future. I could have written a book about Roberta, for efficiency’s sake, but this is not a book of answers; this is a book of questions. The racism in Brazil is very, very strong, and it’s still a taboo topic here. The suffering is so pervasive that some readers struggle to see themselves in this mirror.’
Read the full interview here.
In the initial conception, the intention was to write a novel, without easy answers, about anger in a society as unequal as Brazilian society.
— Paulo Scott, author of Phenotypes
What the judges said
‘A remarkably open and honest study of race, Paulo Scott’s Phenotypes grapples with contentious issues we may not yet have the language to discuss, which makes it all the more urgent. Daniel Hahn’s masterful translation engages with the text with humility and perceptiveness.’
What the critics said
Lucy Popescu, The Observer
‘This is an artfully plotted tale about race, privilege and guilt. Scott circles around the inflammatory event that occurred decades before – a racist comment that provoked a violent fight among teenagers – and demonstrates how quickly prejudice spreads, often with lifelong repercussions […] Scott’s characterisation is superb. Federico’s complexities are revealed through his interactions with others, their different views of him, his public image and inner angst.’
Michael Kleber-Diggs, The Star Tribune
‘Scott approaches complex national and personal questions with tremendous thoughtfulness and skill. Phenotypes is a short novel styled by engaging and epically long sentences, and there are no throwaway moments or scenes.’
Rachel Farmer, Asymptote
‘Phenotypes offers few answers—and expecting them from a single work of fiction would be futile. Instead, Scott opens the floodgates to a myriad of questions, probing the uncomfortable topics that his fictional (but all too real) bureaucrats would rather leave undisturbed. Posed as the novel’s eyes and ears, Federico is the lens through which we view these issues, and the means by which we understand the racially charged situation in Brazil […] It is this personal angle that brings the novel’s broad, sweeping themes into sharp focus. But the novel’s most striking feature—one that jumps out from the first page—is Scott’s sprawling and idiosyncratic writing style. He favours long sentences (in fact, the novel’s second sentence spans twenty-one lines and is incredibly broad in scope), but the writing is taut and polished, never rambling.’
Omari Weekes, The New York Times Book Review
‘[A] rather brisk novel that punctures the country’s fantasy of being a post-racial state and leaves readers scrambling for a sense of closure that it cannot possibly provide […] This longue durée of anti-Blackness plays out with a chaotic energy reflected both in the novel’s form and in the structure of its sentences. The propulsive style of Scott’s novel Nowhere People returns; in Daniel Hahn’s translation, sentences collapse into one another via comma splices, as if there were little time for full stops.’
‘A former lawyer and activist, Scott pours out his indictment of Brazil in long, overflowing sentences that are equal parts outrage and cutting humor […] it is not easy to shake off. A blast of righteous (and spot-on) indignation by a formidable Brazilian author.’
I think it’s a truly astonishing work, not just important for its subject and how that subject is handled, but also incredibly original and sophisticated as a work of literature.
— Daniel Hahn, translator of Phenotypes
Other nominated books by Daniel Hahn
A suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo. Translated from Spanish by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn.
Playful and full of warm humour, José Eduardo Agualusa’s dazzling human drama explores the thrills, hopes and dangers of radical change. Translated by Daniel Hahn.
