Mattos, Malta or Matta?, Aluísio Azevedo’s first detective fiction

Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, a time of effervescence in urban novels, a crime of difficult solution, which occurred in the city of Rio de Janeiro, inspired the publication of the novel-feuilleton Mattos, Malta ou Matta? – without authorship – by the magazine A Semana. The mystery transposed the narrative and came to reality: for a long time, the author of the serial remained unknown. As for the crime, it was not revealed, but, some time later, the authorship of the novel was attributed to the already distinguished writer Aluísio Azevedo. Contemporary with the literature of the so-called enigma school, by Edgar Alan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, Aluísio opens, in Brazil, with this novel, a genre already on the rise in Europe, but, until then, unheard of in the country: the detective novel. Despite some similarities with his foreign contemporaries, the Brazilian author’s mystery narrative remains its peculiarities, transgressing the genre and surprising the reader’s expectations, becoming a landmark in the Brazilian literature.