What is the value of a name? What is the real importance of a lineage? What is the cost of memory? Starting from these evocative questions, Jabuti Prize winner Marilene Felinto tells the story of a woman who leaves behind a love and a comfortable life in Houston to return to the heart of Northeastern Brazil. Her mission is singular: to find the moral and financial reparation to which her family is rightfully entitled.

Convinced that both her parents were exploited throughout their youth, the protagonist launches herself into deep archival research, DNA ancestry tests, and fragmented family oral histories to avenge a legacy of poverty, racism, and years of unsafe, underpaid labor. In her quest for justice, she is forced to confront dark interests in a region long defined by the oppression of workers and systemic land violence. As noted in the novel’s postface, the narrative captures the most urgent issues of our time—class struggle, inequality, and the silences of racism—while celebrating the agency of women and the unlabelled exercise of desire. Like a harpooned whale, full of pain and fury, the protagonist of Corsair takes center stage with the visceral lyricism and nonconformity that have defined Felinto’s work for decades.