Um Copo de Cólera

by Raduan Nassar

'O corpo antes da roupa', afirma o personagem de 'Um copo de cólera' ao narrar o que acontece numa manhã qualquer, depois de uma noite de amor, quando a aparente harmonia entre ele e sua parceira se rompe de repente. Tensa, contundente, a linguagem de 'Um copo de cólera' alcança tal intensidade e vibração que faz desta narrativa uma obra singular da literatura brasileira, um clássico dos nossos tempos.

Genres: Fiction, Brazil, Classics, Romance, Literary Fiction, Novella, Literature

88 pages, Brochura

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Raduan Nassar is a Brazilian writer, son of Lebanese immigrants. He moved to São Paulo when he was a teenager and studied Law and Philosophy at one of the most important universities in Brazil, the University of São Paulo. In 1970, he wrote A Cup of Rage, published in 1978. His literature debut happened in 1975 when Ancient Tillage was released. The Brazilian cinema adapted both of his books. In 1997, Menina a Caminho, a book of short stories written during the 60’s and 70’s, was released, although Raduan stopped writing in 1984. There's plenty of strength and lyricism in his literature style.

Reviews

[Ilse · Rating 2 out of 5]

A hole in the universe

so I refuse to think about what I don't believe in any more, whether that be love, friendship, the family, the church, humanity, I couldn't care less about all that! my existence still terrifies me, but I am not afraid of being alone, exile was a conscious choice, I'm satisfied with the cynicism of those great people who are indifferent towards everything..' 'Oh he's metaphysicalizing now, is Mr. Speculation...if I slacken the reins he immediately shoots off into asinine twaddle


(Tarsilo do Amaral, A cuca (the critter), 1924)

In this 1978 novella by the Brazilian-Lebanese author Raduan Nassar, short chapters of one single sentence largely consisting out of interior monologue and heated dialogue evoke a delirious power game between a man and his mistress. From the arrival in the man's home over to the bedroom, their rising, shower and breakfast, their encounter derails in an explosive conflict in which the political is getting personal and vice versa, once the man freaks out discovering that ants have been gnawing away handbreaths of his hedge. If this sounds a little absurdist as a premise it is perhaps because it is?

Vociferously volcanic, the shift from the erotic to the mutual vehemence of screaming and yelling at each other and the eruption of the vitriolic and violent tirades reflect the couple's passion and the man's mental issues, vulnerability and angst. There might be a dollop of  the hyperbolic relentlessness of Thomas Bernhard in Nasser's rabid prose but I was unable to spot a similar irony or perceptiveness which could have taken this novella to a more intriguing philosophical level.

Not my cup of tea, nor of coffee, water or wine. 

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever read one of those run-on sentences, those sentences that keep going on and on and on, the end of it is not to be seen, you are nowhere close to it and yet you are still engaged in what they are supposed to convey, giving you still more to read, more to ponder, more to wonder about, and such is this story with only seven chapters consisting of one sentence each and in which the first ones there is this brooding and steaming sensuality between an older man and a young woman who spent the night together, but when the morning fog blankets the ground, there is this change in the man's demeanor, triggered by something so trivial, that he erupts in a sudden outburst of anger, which he then turns towards the woman, who cannot but return with provoking and snide remarks of her own, making this an intense chapter with so much tension that it can only end in an explosive climax, such is this book that made it to the Man Booker International Prize Nominee for Longlist (2016), written in the 70's by the reclusive Brazilian Raduan Nassar and now finally translated into English after almost forty years (a job well done by Stefan Tobler), a book that made headlines, and was turned into a movie, with themes of differences in social class and gender, so the rest of the world can finally love it, or hate it, there is no middle ground here, stylistically so different from what you're used to read, that you have to read it twice, the second time paying more attention as the run-on sentences were quite distracting the first time around, making you lose track of your place in the story, so you appreciate it so much more now, as this style enforces the passion and rage between the two lovers, which leaves you breathless in the end.

*inhales... and breathes out*

Extra:
A word from the translator
Book review in the Guardian

Read this for our May Short Story Month Marathon, a personal challenge during which Alex and I will be going through our short story collection in this last week of May. I'm adding a little twist to it by reading books by authors I haven't read from before.

[Sidharth Vardhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

7 chapters - 7 full stops. Intimacy and sudden emotional vulnerability to each other that two people who just had sex might provoke many kind of reactions - including anger and the book uses this fact. Prose is beautiful but overall effect not so much.

[Antonomasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

[4.5] You don't find erotica on Booker Prize lists, at least not since the 1970s. But there's no other word to describe the opening chapters of this tiny book. (Which, incidentally, was written in the 1970s - in Brazil.)

This seems to be another of those occasions when I agree more with critics (not only the Booker International judges; also Nick Lezard in the Guardian) than with the rest of the general public (a few of whom have panned this on Amazon UK since taking up Lezard's recommendation). Blame it on similar educational & class background, that I used to want to be a critic myself, whatever. But I thought, no doubt partly conditioned by other recent great reading experiences featuring vast run-on sentences, that these <60 pages - featuring one of those relationships that, to the best of my knowledge, only happens in films, and consists entirely of amazing sex and blazing rows - were really rather stunning.

The story is a very physical experience; I started trying to read it on the computer, sitting at a table in a rigid plastic chair: couldn't get into it and it was obvious why. Moving to a more comfortable location, it became immersive, the words seeped into the body, there was stretching out of limbs, wriggling of toes. The sensuality of the first chapters carries over into 'The Explosion' - the eloquently vicious row, packed with subtle innuendos, giving the whole story the feeling of the hottest summer days off, sun and sweat clinging to the skin and few obligations, when everything seems tinged with potential sexuality. It makes the most unlikely things sound sexy: tropical algebra heated as its origins (blood & sand). Yet if the argument is read in isolation, its intellectual and verbal dexterity instead appears paramount. Having been reading Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels recently, I was struck by a parallel; the following could have as easily been said by Lila in book two as by Nassar's male narrator: you shitty intellectual, it never occurred to you that everything you say and everything you vomit up is all stuff that you’ve heard from other people, that you haven’t done any of the stuff you talk about. Actually, ["actually", what a supercilous word to prove their point] I agree, but fuck that, I enjoy it. Nassar's story also, occasionally, has ambushes of humour. Or I thought so anyway, in particular when a scene of frustration with a farming problem - presumably mundane in Brazil, but exotic here - intrudes suddenly into the almost hermetic, sensory world of the lovers and the housekeeper who has been waiting on them. Both are experiences of nature, which should unite them, yet one appears sublime, the other ridiculous. Then there's the most ornithologically specific insult I've ever heard: you piece of short-billed pipit shit. I daresay short-billed pipits are common in Brazil and probably have a one-word name there, but, regardless, it raised the wonderfully comical spectre of how twitchers might diss one another.

Yes, there are also a handful of un-PC insults used that some readers may mind, but there is a certain equality between the characters here which I didn't necessarily expect from a nearly 40 year old book by a South American male writer. (Compared, for instance, with some of the more notorious Marquez plots.) Sexually, the man is as much object as subject, at least as much gazed-upon as gazing. I noticed how, during the erotic chapters, my provisional rating changed depending on whether I imagined the most attractive men I'd ever slept with, or someone almost, but not quite, as good looking, or the author's photo (no thanks, too old for me, but the writing alone was still too good to rate below 4.0). And during the row, whilst there are nits to pick if that's what you get off on, each belittles the other and verbally gives as good as they get.
Following the row, a second chapter named 'The Arrival', narrated by her (he narrated the first Arrival) promises her side of the story in the same sequence. Her account of her arrival at his house is surprisingly different. And then the book ends. I can see ways that feminist critics might use this - critically. But as far as I was concerned it was tantalising and so very suited to the sensory mood of the book - and the fully-mirrored story, whether man or woman had gone first, would have been too pat, less stylish, than this abrupt unconclusion.

This intense story with its fairly complex style is the sort of thing I'd have expected to notice via the American Best Translated Book Award, known for its more experimental outlook, or via certain Goodreads friends. It bodes well for the new International Booker, although it remains to be seen what the rest of it will be like (I'd previously read two of the longlist), or whether many of the people who find the main Booker hopelessly middlebrow and bland, and a listing for it an indicator of a book they will dislike, will consider the International a different beast.

----
An excellent article about the author and this book, by the translator: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent... (The clash of class was very obvious in the book - each is confident in the superiority of their class position - yet I didn't quite find the words for it whilst writing the review a few days ago.)

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Desisti a meio. Não gostei, nada faz sentido. Não é meu costume dizer tão mal de uma obra, mas nem sei bem se isto é literatura.

[Portal in the Pages · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't aware books came with teeth. Readers beware.

[Alan · Rating 2 out of 5]

4th book from my reading challenge with Ted.

#8 - Read a book less than 50 pages.

The rage in this one is right there on the surface (and in the title, I guess). You don’t need to go looking for it in the back alley pages. There are no back alley pages. A few short chapters, the same single-sentence bit that books of this kind use, and boom. You’re done. I am starting to become familiar with the trope of the misanthropic character – by now I have my trusty favourites. This one is not one of them. Angry sex and angry words, just not enough to make this an enjoyable read.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compact detonation of lust, ego, and philosophical spite, compressed into a single night and morning between a middle-aged landowner and his young lover, a leftist journalist. The story takes place almost entirely at his remote rural estate, a place he cultivates with the same obsessive control he tries to exert over her.

It begins with his arrival home, where she waits, already glowing with expectation and contempt. Their reunion spirals through ritualized sex, petty teasing, and verbal duels that serve as foreplay. The tone is feverish, sentences stretching as if the prose itself were sweating.

Morning arrives, and with it a quarrel about ants eating his hedge, which promptly swells into a war of worldviews. He defends instinct, solitude, and male fury as pure and self-justifying; she counters with reason, progress, and her own brand of righteousness. The argument becomes a philosophical slugfest that drips venom and vanity on both sides.

Each scene is both literal and allegorical: body against body, ideology against ideology, each accusing the other of hypocrisy while performing it. The farm becomes a stage for Brazil's political and sexual tensions, the couple’s intimacy collapsing into a manifesto of rage. The ending crowns their conflict with an act that fuses passion and destruction so tightly that neither survives intact.

It is a verbal combustion of two egos consuming each other in the name of truth, pleasure, and pride, leaving only the acrid aftertaste of having been absolutely, terribly alive.

The man and the woman are not really lovers but rival monologues in bed together. He is a landowner drunk on his own sense of primal authenticity; she is a journalist addicted to her own progressive righteousness. Both claim moral superiority, both are hypocrites, both weaponize intellect and flesh to dominate the other. A Cup of Rage is both revolting and brilliant, a literary pressure cooker that doesn't let its characters or readers breathe.

Raduan Nassar was born in 1935 in Pindorama, São Paulo, and grew up among crops, livestock, and Lebanese family arguments that probably taught him more about passion than any classroom. He studied law in São Paulo, edited a small newspaper with his brothers, and then wrote exactly two short books that made everyone else in Brazilian literature look overworked. After 1985 he turned his back on the literary circus and devoted himself to farming, eventually giving his land to a university so that future agronomists could cultivate what he once plowed for words.

The book is a 40 year old prophecy about people who confuse rage for depth and argument for intimacy. It remains unnervingly modern because the sickness it diagnoses never went away.

[Larissa Tollstadius · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dizem que é um excelente livro. Posso chegar a essa conclusão depois que estudar um pouco sobre o autor e sua obra.

Mas a priori não gostei. O livro soou artificial, o personagem principal, machista e raso.

Sua parceria, tratada como "femeazinha libertária", também é caricatural. Ambos entram numa discussão sem sentido e entediante sobre suas posturas políticas, ele conservador, ela humanista, jornalista, defensora do povo. Pulei alguns trechos dessa discussão pra chegar o final do capítulo.

A partir daqui tem detalhes da trama que quem ainda não leu talvez não deseje saber adiantado.

O macho bate na jornalista e isso parece ser habitual entre eles. Da agressão surge o tesão, mas ele apesar de fingir estar interessado em possui-la, quebra o movimento para o sexo. Frustrada e enraivecida, ela resolve ir embora.

O último capítulo pode parecer o momento onde a mulher dá a volta por cima, pois ele aparece em posição fetal e ela surge para aconchega-lo como mãe. Mas não vi vantagem alguma nisso.

Antes parece o retrato de uma relação extremante doentia. E talvez seja essa a intenção do autor.

Resta saber o que de bom eu poderia tirar do livro, mas até o momento não descobri.

Lê-se rápido o livro porque é mesmo de um formato pequeno, apenas uma novela. Tive também vontade de me livrar logo do volume.

[Matthew Devereux ∞ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wowzers. I simply didn't understand this one at all. Not in any way whatsoever. Nada. Niente. Zilch. Basically it's about a man and woman in Brazil who sleep together and then proceed to insult each other. And that, pretty much, is it. I found it bewildering, not merely because it is written without full stops (there are only 7 in 7 sections I think) and in a way that makes Marcel Proust's sentences look incredibly curt, but because I simply couldn't fathom what on earth the point of it all was. The only saving grace for me was that it was only 45 pages long so I could read it in an about one hour - if it had been, say, 250 pages I would have bailed out faster than a parachutist. It's no doubt my failing - I am a pretty thick person - but this one was simply beyond my comprehension.

[Paula Mota · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este livro foi escrito em 1978 e tem apenas sete pontos finais, tantos como os capítulos que o compõem, muitas décadas antes de livros que causam tanto espanto e elogios pela sua inovação como "Solar Bones", em 2016, e "Ducks, Newburyport", em 2019. O formato adequa-se perfeitamente ao fluxo de consciência do narrador e ao tom, que acaba irado e violento. É pena o conteúdo não estar à altura, porque, no fundo, não passa de um copo de purgante.

E foi cortante o riso de escárnio "há-há-há... bicha!" foi a mordida afiada da piranha, tentando numa só dentada me capar co'a navalha, traindo-se por sinal, feito um travesti de carnaval, nos grossos pêlos da sua ideologia, ela que trombeteava o protesto contra a tortura enquanto era ao mesmo tempo um descarado algoz do dia-a-dia, igualzinha ao povo. (...) E eu me queimando disse "puta" que foi uma explosão na boca e minha mão voando outra explosão na cara dela, e não era a bofetada generosa parte de um ritual, eu agora combinava intencionalmente a palma co'as armas repressiva do seu arsenal (seria sim no esporro e na porrada!), por isso tornei a dizer "puta" e tornei a voar a mão.

[Keith Bruton · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
.
I have mixed feelings about this very short novel. A pair of lovers destroy each other with vicious words. Written in only a few sentences.

This book is intense. It gave me anxiety reading it. The intensity and insults will drain you. Lovers of Thomas Bernhard (Woodcutters) and Albert Camus (The Fall) might like this one.

Nassar is an excellent writer for sure and this might have been better in a collection of short stories or a novel with more back story involving the lovers.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 1 out of 5]

"But all this discursive aggression was verging exhaustively on the monotonous"

the narrator tells us at one point - and really that sums up this book. Quite a remarkable achievement to make a 45 page novel tedious, but Nassar and his translator Tobler manage it.

Nicholas Lezard in the Guardian made the obvious comparison to the master of the rant, Thomas Bernhard (Guardian). Having read 18 Bernhard novels, Nassar is no Bernhard. Regurgitating a thesaurus and, when that fails as it frequently does, throwing in swear words doesn't make good literature. If there is a comparison at all, it's to Kirsy McColl and Shane McGowan in the Fairytale of New York, but at least that had a great tune.

Now I will admit that perhaps one needs to be in a certain mood and of a certain mindset to properly appreciate this. Bloggers and Goodreads reviews whose views I respect, and whose taste I often share, love it. So for a more favourable take read the Guardian piece, this from Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) and this from the translator (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ent...) which describes the novel well:

"An older, chauvinist farmer tells of the furious argument that engulfs him and his younger, urban, feminist girlfriend after she spends the night on his farm. Neither character comes out of it well. Nassar gives us the painful glibness of the middle-class woman's liberal posturing as well as an egotistical male, whose mouth runs away from him into bombast and ravings, and whose violence is triggered by something no bigger than leaf-cutter ants."

He also notes that "only on a second read – or as an editor or translator – do you see the intricate patterns and repetitions that combine to produce this crushing emotional onslaught." but despite the 45 page length, I'm afraid life is too short for me to read this twice.

[Italo Lins Lemos · Rating 1 out of 5]

Como elogiar uma obra que é pura misoginia?

Francamente, o mote de "Um Copo de Cólera" me deixou furioso. Chega de reforçar a tese de que a linha entre o amor e o ódio é tênue. Chega de embelezar literariamente a noção de que um relacionamento visceral é aquele em que o sexo se confunde com a pancadaria.

A obra consiste em uma discussão acalorada entre um homem de meia-idade e uma jovem jornalista. O homem passa os primeiros capítulos ignorando a mulher — que sequer tem um nome —, transa com ela e, na manhã (nos capítulos) seguinte(s), a humilha verbalmente e a agride fisicamente.

Como não há nenhuma menção crítica ao ocorrido por parte do narrador, e como o final da obra sugere que a mulher seria de certa forma dependente da argúcia, sensualidade e agressividade do homem, eu lamento que essa obra seja considerada um clássico da literatura brasileira.

De méritos, temos apenas a qualidade da escrita de Raduan Nassar. O texto tem um ritmo frenético (que é produzido pela ausência de pontuação final) e o autor mostra um rico vocabulário para narrar os acontecimentos enervantes — por vezes, lembrando as obras de Thomas Bernhard.

Ainda assim, faço questão de atribuir nota mínima a esse livro.

[Kamil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly well written, steamy, violent, with class struggle elements erotic novella. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nar3l...

[Stephen Curran · Rating 1 out of 5]

After finishing this slip of a thing I Googled some reviews and was amazed to find a couple of critics getting sweaty-palmed about the whole thing. Nicholas Lezard appears to have had a whale of a time: "incredibly sexy", he says. I remained utterly unstirred. It never occurred to me that I was supposed to feel any other way.

Stylistically, it shares a good deal with Jose Saramago. The looping sentences take up entire chapters and lend it a quality of breathlessness. It also shares Saramago's obsession with Fernando Pessoa (whose 'The Book of Disquiet' I didn't get along with at all). The story concerns a supremely arrogant narrator and a younger journalist having sex and then engaging in a slanging match. It's about shifting power relationships, I suppose, with each party deliberately provoking the other. Insight-wise, there is nothing enlightening. The long argument is pretentious. I am boring myself writing about it.

[Marco · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eén grote schreeuw om aandacht. Niet aan mij besteed.

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Él y ella. Ella y él están ligados tanto por su mutua atracción erótica, como por su cólera, su bronca, en sus discusiones político-filosóficas, en las que interviene la razón, y aún más, como en la cama, la pasión; la dominación, el sometimiento; machihembrados.

La discusión (La bronca) ocupa la mayor parte del libro, y está organizado en una sola oración, interminable, llena de furia, en la que los diálogos se van intercalando con el flujo mental de él: si, es una obra falocéntrica. Él, escéptico; ella, idealista. ¡Fascista! ¡Intelectualilla de mierda! ¡Impotente! ¡Puta!

La discusión es fogosa, irritante, exasperante; cualquier intención de intervenir para ordenarla sería despreciada y expulsada; fogosa, fuego al que endiosan y necesitan.

También los poetas, que lo ignoran, contribuyen, a esta guerra-juego, como se señala en la nota final: “Quémame, lengua de fuego”; “transfórmame en tus brasas”; “fuego (espíritu) violento y dulcísimo” (Jorge de Lima, “Espíritu paráclito”). Y “Caigan ciudades, sufran los pueblos, cesen la libertad y la vida”; “cuando el rey de marfil está en peligro, que importan la carne y los huesos de las hermanas y de las madres y de los niños”; “nada pesa en el alma que, a lo lejos mueran hijos” (Fernando Pessoa, "Escuché que en otro tiempo, en Persia”).

No logré sintonizar con esta pasión que vincula la política-filosofía, la dominación, el erotismo. Aunque me costó ponderarla, una novela muy bien darrollada.

[Paulo Sousa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Livro 4°/Jan//4°2017

Título: Um copo de cólera
Primeira publicação: 1978
Autor: Raduan Nassar
Editora: @companhiadasletras
Páginas: 88
Minha classificação: ⭐️

_____________________________________________________

Quase sempre a leitura baseada em sugestões de livros são boas. Quase sempre. Sempre há livros bem falados, bem cultuados em certos meios, sempre figurando na lista dos "mais".
Ouvi muito falar da obra revisitada de Raduan Nassar, escritor brasileiro com raízes libanesas, que saiu recentemente pela Companhia das Letras com o título Obra Completas, abarcando o aclamado Lavoura Arcaica, Menina a caminho e este "Um copo de cólera", que acabo de ler.
UM COPO DE CÓLERA é uma novela curta, mas estranhamente truncada. Principalmente pela brutalidade existente na relação entre o casal de personagens principais, a meu ver, extremamente caricaturais. Um historieta doentia, cuja obsessão, machismo, desrespeito - com alguns laivos de violência - me fizeram sair mal da leitura, tamanha o grau de insatisfação que esse livro me trouxe.
Não gostei nem um pouco de lê-lo, apesar de perceber o esforço do escritor em compor uma novela num único tom e fôlego (o capítulo "O esporro", praticamente uma única e gigantesca sentença, é um exemplo!). Não sei se ainda quero ler Lavoura Arcaica.

[Luciana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Não há como elogiar misoginia, menos ainda um texto tão enfadonho.

A novela inicia-se de forma caótica, permeada de situações sexuais, diálogos entrecortados, se desenvolvendo mediante ao ataque. De um lado uma jovem jornalista, do outro, um homem chegando a meia-idade, que, sucumbindo a um fato ínfimo, isto é, o rompimento de uma cerca, começam um embate sem sentido e acalorado.

Debate este que se envereda para problemas políticos e de natureza privada, que são tão tediosos ao ponto que apenas desejava que se findasse logo. Seguindo, com o caos ainda imperando, a sujeição, a misoginia, a violência física, mais situações sexuais são os protagonistas de uma grande bagunça com algumas citações de obras clássicas. Definitivamente não foi uma boa leitura.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meu primeiro Nassar. Arrebatador

[Brown Girl Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hated this book! I only gave it 2 stars because the author can write. Otherwise this is a pretentious bunch of drivel in my opinion.

[Rui Naves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma das três obras do escritor brasileiro Raduan Nassar, "Um Copo de Cólera" narra minuciosamente (apesar das suas escassas páginas) toda uma contenda verbal e até mesmo física, consentida ou não essa é a questão, entre um senhor creio que já de alguma idade e a sua parceira.

Este livro não se limita "só" a abordar gloriosamente a voracidade do amor selvagem de uma forma visceral - isso já seria mais do que o bastante -, mas dá-nos ainda uma cuidada perspetiva de vida dos dois amantes que já referi, por meio de uma discussão alicerçada na oscilação entre a razão e a emoção.

O homem, sujeito de uma vida recatada, com uma intrínseca desconfiança de tudo e todos, descrente de qualquer luta contra a pobreza ou a injustiça social, confronta-se com uma mulher dada às ciências humanas e aos problemas do quotidiano, com uma avidez de ajudar a combater na luta de classes que o homem afirma ser desnecessária e irrealizável.

Esta contenda atinge tal ponto que o homem, no auge da discussão que sucedeu uma noite de amor, parte para a violência que já disse não saber se consentida ou não, e daí floresce todo um erotismo desprovido de qualquer indício de banalidade na descrição e (desculpem a ousadia) completamente antípoda do erotismo dos "bestsellers" corriqueiros.

Apesar deste erotismo ser a génese do livro, creio que, como já mencionei, a perspetiva de vida dos amantes seja fulcral e dela muito se extraia: desde a acusação de "fascistão" ao homem, até à belíssima (aumento ainda mais o aumentativo) frase do homem que diz que, resumindo aqui, pode ser tudo, egoísta, fascista por vezes, displicente, mas não "faz da fome do povo o disfarce do próprio apetite", esta discussão proporciona-nos uma ampla visão de vidas divergentes.

Ainda assim, e para finalizar, este livro mostra-nos acima de tudo que nada disto é impeditivo do amor, pois na noite seguinte lá estava a mesma mulher, no mesmo quarto, com o mesmo homem, prontos a se amarem novamente.

[Il Pech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nassar, con uno stile elegante e una prosa incalzante e ricca, scrive i primi sei capitoli di due o tre paginette l'uno e dopo un inizio promettente, senza alcuna ragione apparente, tutti diventano vampiri e il film prende una piega quanto meno inaspettata. Ah no, quello è dal tramonto all'alba. Qua il protagonista, senza alcuna ragione apparente, s'incazza. E l'erotismo dei primi capitoletti lascia il posto al capitolo finale, 40 pagine di delirio sproloquiante di un tizio che litiga con una tizia sganciando impressionanti frasi torrenziali e dimenticandosi di andare a capo come un Bernhard furente dopo che il var ha annullato un gol alla sua squadra del cuore.

La lite è molto teatrale, direi la parodia di una lite vera, ma il libro funziona bene ed è una grande lettura perché nella sua brevità (60 pagine) dà al lettore molto più di quello che gli chiede.

[Sub_zero · Rating 3 out of 5]

No se me ocurren formas, en tan solo 80 páginas, de atravesar tantos estados anímicos diferentes, amor y odio incluidos. Pero lo cierto es que la novela de Raduan Nassar, a pesar de sus más y sus menos, consigue empujarte hacia un torbellino de sensaciones y profundas imágenes literarias que tiene como epicentro una pareja asentada en la más absoluta toxicidad. La trama es prácticamente nula: un hombre llega a casa, folla con su mujer y después se pelean. Sin embargo, la contundencia de sus argumentos, la visceral atmósfera que te hace respirar y la profundidad de sus dobles lecturas la convierten en una obra poderosa e inusual que logra inclinar la balanza hacia el lado positivo.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cup of rage is that deceptive short book that can make reading seem like a lot of hard work. Somewhere between experimental and irritating, the book contains seven sentences that span seven chapters.


A journalist and an old man are together. The first 3 chapters are of them having sex when their guards are down and their vulnerabilities shared. The next chapter is that fight about something small that escalates out of proportion - a probable effort at contrast or causality - i am not sure - of the intimacy.


In the blinding rage they try to hurt each other verbally/physically where the entire objective is to win the argument. Many fights escalate this way in everyday life and this book just about magnifies it.


I did not know what the point of long sentences was. Trying.

[Salma Mohaimeed · Rating 2 out of 5]

كأسّ من الغضب هو ما يتجرعه القارئ بعد قراءة هذه الرواية ، حسنا لأكن عادلة ليس من الغضب بل الخواء .
الرواية تتم في يوم واحد عن صحفية وحبيبها مارسا الحب ليلاً و في الصباح يرى الحبيب نملا بأرض مزرعته فيثور وبعدها يتبادل وحبيبته الشتائم والسباب !

كان الكاتب يعتكز "عكاز الكلام المنمق " والأسلوب الحسن لكن النص ظل أعرجا.

[☽ Sono sempre vissuta nel castello Chiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un romanzo, un racconto o una poesia? Forse tutte e tre insieme, Un bicchiere di rabbia è l’ultima opera dello scrittore brasiliano Nassar. Un libro che racconta l’incontro scontro di un uomo e di una donna che si odiano e si amano attraverso un unico indissolubile sentimento: tutto in amore è complicato e torbido ma sopratutto filtrato da una maschera di razionalità, irrimediabilmente destinata ad infrangersi. Un libro difficile da affrontare e da leggere, sia per lo stile (unico e lirico) sia per la violenza dei dialoghi, se però siete in cerca di qualcosa di particolare e volete sfidarvi ve lo consiglio assolutamente

[Gorab · Rating 1 out of 5]

A tiny tale of long sentences driven by lust and rage.

Each chapter is a single sentence! That's how long the sentences are.
Loved the beginning, the initial narration style.

But then somewhere in the middle, I started losing it.
"The Explosion" is where my patience level exploded.

If not for its number of pages (and a challenge), it was a sure shot DNF.

[Sergio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sensualidade pura com agressividade desencarnada. Texto vivo, para se tomar a largos goles. Veneno insano das relações, em seu eterno retorno ao inexplicável de cada um, simbolizado por uma equação de incógnitas desveladas, recombinadas e não reconhecidas.
Leitura sedutora e tensa.