Rodrigo de Souza: Todos os Cachorros São Azuis (All Dogs are Blue)

The latest addition to my website is Rodrigo de Souza‘s Todos os Cachorros São Azuis (All Dogs are Blue). Rodrigo de Souza suffered from mental health issues and, for a long time, would not leave his house. This novel is the story of an unnamed narrator who is in a mental hospital, as a result of a psychotic episode. He is now thirty-six but has had mental issues since the age of fifteen. We follow his story: the chip implanted in him by the CIA and KGB, the aliens who are coming to take him away, his imaginary friends, Rimbaud and Baudelaire, how he avoids taking pills, the sad stories of many of the poor of Rio with mental health problems and his obsession with the colour blue, the colour of his stuffed dog and of the pill Haldol. He is finally released, only to start an (imaginary) religion called Todog, of which he is the leader. At times, he is lucid, most of the time he is not. It is a grim and sad tale of a man unable to cope with reality.

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