''Budapeste'' (2003), by Chico Buarque, Brazilian singer, composer and
writer, is a novel about the multiple lives (or perceptions
of live) of a self-centred man. The story is narrated by the main character, José Costa, Brazilian, married with Vanda, with a son, Joaquinzinho, born amid the story. José Costa is an underworld
writer: he earns his living by writing books to be signed by others. And he says he doesn't mind, he prefers anonymity, he feels satisfied to see the success his books have, even though they bare other's name. But José Costa is aloof from his family, from his wife: he doesn't understand her, he doesn't make an effort to do so; he becomes more and more alloof from the company where he works (which eventually bankrupts, tough only after he is already away). It's on a return trip from an
anonymous writers' congress that he discovers Budapest... and, there, Kriska. Returning back then to Rio de Janeiro he can only think about Hungary and about the Hungarian language : he dreams in Hungarian! An unimportant circumstance finally brakes the thin thread still holding him to his Brazilian family and off he goes to Budapest, where he becomes Zsoze Kósta, with a life almost exactly like the one he had left in Brazil: a family from which he is aloof, a job as an anonymous writer... Until a professional colleague takes revenge in the worst manner an anonymous writer could do to other anonymous writer: he writes a book and signs it with Zsoze Kósta's name! The anonymity is broke; more, the book sells and Zsoze Kósta becomes famous... famous by the only book that bore his name, the only one he didn't write...