The library, a tale of Lima Barreto
Lima Barreto certainly ranks among one of Brazil's greatest writers ever. In addition to its well-known books published several short stories. On them their particular character always makes time to present us with stories that make us reflect not only on literature and on their role in society. In this tale we treat now "The Library" the protagonist is a public official "normal", which finds itself fascinated and overwhelmed by an inheritance: namely a huge library, which belonged to his grandmother, also containing the most important works of literature and classical science. His grandmother was a literate man and waited for his descendants to follow in his footsteps. However the financial decline of the family and the urgency of everyday life led to the only decent this eminent scholar want to keep the library was him. Not being himself a scholar or expert in classical literature, the protagonist has all the detail mishaps and annoyances that I had to spend to save "the library" from which he had never read a single book. Such considerations, perhaps the metaphor of the fate of literacy in a society like ours, lead to the surprising ending, when one day your child goes off to watch the races from the Flemish and he asks his wife to buy him a pint of kerosene ...