Role Play

“Drummond’s narrative voice is fiercely honest, coolly cynical, and sharply scathing . . . [the narrator] is not an especially appealing character; and yet, remarkably, Drummond manages to elicit readers’ empathy for her, mining her most fundamental and human flaws and insecurities. An unsparing critique of Brazil’s young elites.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Sharp . . . The book’s power comes from [the narrator’s] scathing assessment of the elite: rich people are painted as oblivious to the concerns of others, the artistic class as disingenuous in their calls for social equality, and even the protagonist herself as more interested in being glamorous and sexually desirable than anything else. Drummond’s incendiary tale burns bright.” —Publishers Weekly

“Role Play is a twisted, painful, brilliantly written novel in the spirit of Clarice Lispector that allows the reader to truly feel the depth of one person’s unexpectedly heartbreaking arc in the face of something much larger than herself.” —Lily Hunter, Booklist

"Drummond flays open the shiny world from which her characters came, unafraid to expose the faulty optics and damaging compromises at its decadent core. I loved this book very much." —Stephanie LaCava, author of I Fear My Pain Interests You

"Clara Drummond wastes no time dropping the reader into this addictive slideshow of decadence and sex. Role Play is gorgeously catty, short and anything-but-sweet." —Sloane Crosley, author of Grief Is For People

"A provocative and tightly wound novella about the way internalized capitalism slowly unravels one woman's sanity among the insanely rich of São Paulo. Too real to be satire, too funny to be realism, and mordant all the way through." —Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X

"Hilarious, knife-sharp and thrillingly alive, Clara Drummond's Role Play is a romp to remember. A glittering excavation of São Paulo's upper crust, our heroine's mind, and the absurdity of being alive right now. I loved it." —Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different

"Clara Drummond's Role Play feels equal parts Eve Babitz and Thomas Bernhard, blending their hedonistic, troubled, occasionally comical excesses into an ultra-privileged millennial in contemporary Brazil. Daniel Hahn's exhilarating translation is hard to put down—I snorted it all the way to the end like the main character snorts her drugs." —Fernando A. Flores, author of Valleyesque and Tears of the Trufflepig