"In a Brazilian public hospital, an old man's heartbeat falters: his daughter and the nurses wait impatiently, listening to the incoherent monologue of a dying man. But as Eulalio's body stays rooted to the bed, his mind, unshackled from human consciousness, soars. And as his daughter becomes attuned to his words, she realizes that her father is not saying goodbye, but is instead painting a vast, impressionistic canvas, rendered in the glorious colours of Eulalio's past, present, and future. Writing with vertiginous style, Buarque liberates Eulalio from the dictate of time, and sends him spinning across an entire family lineage. And whilst Buarque explores two hundred years of Brazil's heritage - the figures who have shaped it, and the figures who have destroyed it - Eulalio sifts through the rich fragments of his life, and those of his ancestors and descendants: a kaleidoscope of love, death and beautiful whores."