[close] The Lizard's Smile is the first novel in five years from the internationally acclaimed Brazilian novelist Joao Ubaldo Ribeiro. A best-seller in his native land, it is a suspenseful, spirited, and very funny novel about a truly serious subject - the hazards of genetic engineering - that confirms Ribeiro's reputation as one of the masters of the Latin American novel. Set on an island off the coast of Bahia in northeast Brazil, The Lizard's Smile centers on one Joao Pedroso, a disenchanted biologist who has given up his profession to become a fishmonger. Kindly if a bit enigmatic, given to drink and rumination, Joao has recently been disturbed by a vague but pervasive sense of evil, manifesting itself chiefly among the island's animal family. Arrayed around him are such figures as the Secretary of Health for Bahia, Dr. Angelo Marcos Barreto, a fastidious, compulsive, and corrupt millionaire who has been diagnosed as having cancer ... his much younger wife, Ana Clara, who has developed an appetite for her husband's medicinal stash of marijuana, for the seemingly irresistible Joao, and for a pseudonymous journal in which she records her adventures in high style ... Father Monteirinho, the local priest, who finds it increasingly hard to be confidant and drinking partner to his parishioners while exercising his churchly duties ... and Dr. Lucio Nemesio, surgeon and director of the island's new, state-of-the-art hospital, an older man, easily worried by the behavioral tics he is beginning to witness around him ... Each of these in turn (and sometimes together) will be caught up in the search to discover just why the animals, the birds, and even some humans are sickening and taking on new forms. The answers will prove surprising and the pleasures for the reader immense. [close]