Geraldo Affonso Muzzi

Diplomatic Trail Geraldo Affonso Muzzi

If you want to be universal, begin by painting your village! (Tolstoy) Following Tolstoy's advice, after painting his homeland in a previous trilogy, Our Golden Yearly Years, Geraldo Muzzi describes his diplomatic journey of four decades, in a mixture of reality and fiction. He describes countries and cultures, conducting the reader with a friendly hand, driving him to inebriation and a vertigo of feelings, inviting us to close the eyes and follow him in the description of life in embassies and consulates in different lands in all continents and their historical moments and peculiarities. At the end of this international trilogy we become aware that this work is a real shrine, a repository of aspects seldom before explored in the History books or in the media news. The iron curtain, a name to describe the division between Eastern and Western Europe, is the scenario of political and economic influences, describing a society in which the words of order were cautiousness, fear and mystery. This book is an invitation to knowledge, not only of what History teaches us, but also the version of those who participated of decisive moments in the route that Brazil and the world shared until the emergency of the XXI century. Some spirits are still reluctant and uncompromising in accepting globalization, arguing that it will bury culture and fragment even more the identities; but maybe there is an optimistic idea in this panorama, if we appreciate unity in diversity, the parts and the whole, without that kind of homogenization that could destroy the character of mankind. Some questions are answered to the readers during this narrative: how is the daily life in an Embassy and the Ambassador's intimacy? What is the Adam's apple, or what is the way to explain and justify individual or collective questions? In a word, what is the amount of fiction and reality in the pages of this trilogy?