This was hard going and pretty disappointing. I was looking forward to learning more about Lula, and the books is billed as his first major biography. But it’s not really a biography as such, but more an exploration of his early politics and later arrest and imprisonment. There’s no real attempt to chronicle his life as in a conventional cradle-to-grave biography. In fact we’re almost halfway through before the biographical details emerge. The first third or so focuses, in great detail, on his arrest and imprisonment, which coming at the start lacks context. The author assumes too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. Maybe he’s thinking of his Brazilian readership rather than his international one, but that seems very short-sighted. There’s virtually nothing about Lula’s presidency. Are we supposed to already know about it? There’s lots of name-dropping of people an outside reader won’t recognise, and this becomes tedious. As do the frankly weird chapter titles. So I was left knowing very little more about Lula than I already knew, and left wondering at whom this book was aimed. Certainly not an international readership, it seems to me. I don’t doubt its authenticity as the author had access to Lula and has obviously done his research, but a more accessible and engaging approach would have been welcomed.

As I dip my toes into more political non-fiction, I got excited when the opportunity to read Lula by Fernando Morais came around.

What I’ve known over the years about Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) has been entirely based on what I’ve very briefly read about him but mostly have heard people say about him and his politics. I enjoyed how the book went into his past and what made him the man he is today.

It was very informative as to how events in his life shaped his politics over the years and led us back to his winning the Presidency recently.

That said, this book was strange. The chapter titles felt like they were written by someone just slapping sentence fragments together, because they thought “The longer the better!”

As someone who knew few details of the hullabaloo around Lula’s rise, fall, and rise again, this book did a great job informing me. I would say, however, that the book didn’t deliver in giving me more information on Lula’s time as President.

Thank you Netgalley and Verso for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I was disappointed by this. Lula is a really interesting figure, but this isn't really a biography of him. The first third of the book is a moment-by-moment account of his arrest and imprisonment in 2018. It's almost halfway through the book before you get some biographical details on his background and details. Then the book focuses on his union activities and early political activism before abruptly ending. If you think you're getting his full life story, think again, this book completely skips his presidency, in other words the most interesting aspect of his life.

Another reason this isn't really a biography, is because the focus is often on everyone except Lula. There are a lot of details about people who briefly interact with Lula or the wider political scene, but at times Lula is forgotten. The author is far too fond of dropping long lists of names or sometimes entire news articles into the narrative where they don't belong.

Even if this was written for a Brazilian audience, there is a surprisingly lack of context explained. At no point does it even mention on what charges Lula was arrested or what Operation Car Wash was. We are told that a hacker uncovers crucial information that secures Lula's release, but it never says what this information is. This is even more odd because there are many tangents and side-points that get far too much attention, while the important details are ignored.

Finally this book has some of the most bizarre chapter titles I have ever seen. For example, chapter 5 is "After standing up to the neighbors and the Federal Police, the people spend 581 days yelling greetings to Lula. He can’t see them from his cell, but he can hear them." Chapter 17 is "Clobbered in the polls, Lula sinks into depression and decides to abandon politics. He travels to Cuba, listens to Fidel, and returns to Brazil to become the best-elected congressman in history."