Brazil Red is a 2001

2001 in literature

The year 2001 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's classic book, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, is released to movie theaters...

 French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 historical novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Jean-Christophe Rufin

Jean-Christophe Rufin

Jean-Christophe Rufin is a French doctor and novelist. He is the president of Action Against Hunger and one of the founders of Médecins Sans Frontières. He was Ambassador of France in Senegal from 2007 to June 2010.-Early life:...

 which recounts the unsuccessful French attempt to conquer Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

 in the 16th century, against a background of wars of religion and a rite-of-passage discovery of the charms and secrets of the Amerindian world.

Plot summary

The plot of this veritable epic is set in 1555, on a small island in the Guanabara bay of Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

, where an odd French expeditionary force, made up of sailors, craftsmen, priests, ex-convicts and a Quixotic knight, has just landed. Their objective is twofold: on the one hand, to set up a French colony on this far-off rich continent to compete with the Portuguese

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, on the other hand, to convert the Indians to Christianity

Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...

. Ill-prepared for the realities of the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

 and, above all, torn apart by theological controversy which sets the Catholics and Calvinists among them against one another, these French pioneers see their dreams of colonisation gradually dissipate. Both satirical and colourful, Rouge Brésil is above all a passionate and exciting exploration of the origins of imperialist thinking.