Um Lobisomem Cacerense: A Brazilian Werewolf as Social Satire

The subtitle does half the work before the cover is even open: Um Lobisomem Cacerense — Só Que Não, a Cáceres werewolf, except it isn't. Daniel Genuino's 2016 novel reaches for the old legend of the river city of Cáceres, in Mato Grosso, and then turns it to other purposes entirely.

By the publication listing's own account, the book is fiction with a romantic strand, set in Cáceres and aimed squarely at present-day troubles. The werewolf is a figure of speech made flesh — an allegory, the description says, for the ills that stalk the city: corruption, drug trafficking, politics, and public health. The supernatural stands in for the social, which is the point the title's wry “except it isn't” seems to make in advance.

Using a regional monster this way has a logic to it. A town that already tells stories about something prowling its edges has, in effect, a ready-made language for the things it cannot say plainly — and a novelist can borrow that language whole.

The listing records a first edition in 2016, 122 pages, issued through the self-publishing platform Clube de Autores, with ISBN 978-85-920215-1-1. The title leaves its own warning: a werewolf may be the story’s most conspicuous threat without being its most dangerous one.

Sources

• Clube de Autores — “Um Lobisomem Cacerense” listing