The Supermacho – Modern Romance / O Supermacho – romance moderno

This book is in Portuguese. Published by our favorite Brazilian publishers and badass women, UBU.

“Making love is an unimportant act, since one can repeat it indefinitely” is the opening phrase of this provocative novel. The narrative takes place in 1920, eighteen years ahead of the date of publication, which helps to explain the subtitle Modern Romance. Irreverent, erotic, full of language games and elements that make flirt with science fiction, the book tells the saga of a man capable of performing the act of love on a superhuman scale.

Although of undeniable importance, sexuality is not the only question discussed. The dispute between a train capable of reaching unimaginable speeds and a team of cyclists – whose energy comes solely from the innovative Perpetual Motion Food – as well as the invention of a device theoretically capable of instilling feelings, place love and the relationship between man and machine side by side. Through the body, limits are tested, be they sexual or sports, and physical pleasure and the desire to break records are confused.

Jarry’s work exposes a society in which the human being was strengthened by the advances of science and, at the same time, was increasingly subject to it. In his quest for the absolute, would man himself have become a machine? Standing outside of his time a discussion that paradoxically found echo in the reflections of the time on love and desire, Jarry composed a novel whose actuality remains untouched and where echoes of Nietzsche’s superman are heard.