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Milton Hatoum (1952) has emerged in the past decade as one of the most important and representative voices of contemporary Brazilian literature. Mostly focused on Manaus or Amazonia at large, Hatoum's work escapes the imaginaries and stereotypes that represent the region solely as a realm of nature. Instead, throughout his works, which include Relato de um certo oriente (1990), Dois irmãos (2000), or Cinzas do norte (2005), among others, he has represented an urban and cosmopolitan image of Amazonia, one that usually dwells on the aftermath of the region's financial euphoria around the rubber boom. Reflecting some of the elements that define his own experience, Hatoum's works often present us with urban landscapes, stories that delve into family sagas, and narratives that speak of the Middle Eastern immigration into Amazonia in the early twentieth century.
This essay focuses on Hatoum's Órfãos do Eldorado (2008). The novel represents Amazonia intertwining the history of rubber exploitation in the region, the saga of decay of a wealthy family, and the mythical imaginary of Eldorado mixed with local legends and myths. To this extent, the novel reinterprets the myth of Eldorado to critique the region's modernization process, and shines a light on indigenous and local imaginaries. Many of the recurrent topics that critics have proposed as elements that define Hatoum's literature are present in Orjaos do Eldorado as well: the novel's exploration of Eldorado connects the story with the regionalist tradition, and the mournful look into the past brings forth nostalgia and memory as defining aesthetic elements of this text. In this essay, however, I look into the ways in which Órfãos articulates a critique of the universality of History as a narrative of progress and development. In the following pages, I interpret the novel as a text that subverts and debunks this Eurocentric and dominant conception by launching a critique of Amazonia's modernization process, and by responding to it with a narrative texture defined by a critical nostalgia, orality, and a rejection to perpetuate an illusion of development.
