Writing alumnus Harold Rogers ’21 has published his first novel, Tropicália, released by Atria Books earlier this month.
Tropicália takes place in the heady days before a New Year’s Eve party on the bustling sands of Brazil’s Copacabana Beach. A family reckons with a matriarch’s long-awaited return, causing old secrets to come to light in this infectiously vibrant debut that explores the heartbreak and hope of what it means to be from two homes, two peoples, and two worlds.
The novel is told from the perspective of several different characters spanning generations of one family. Rogers discussed the artistic choice to do so in an interview with PEN America:
“For a while I was dabbling with a few short stories written in the third person about two characters who were siblings,” Rogers said. “I decided what I was working on was probably a novel and that’s when I changed from writing in third person to first person and the voices really started to gain energy. The breakthrough though was Grandma Marta’s chapter. That’s when I decided to try to write from the perspective of all the immediate family members (without that constraint it would’ve gotten pretty unwieldy). What I love about the multiple first person perspectives is that it allows me to discover how these characters conceive of themselves in their own language and syntax and as a Self navigating the pesky entanglements of time and other Selves—and it granted me a lot of freedom to play around with tone and language and story.”
"One of the most marvelous books I've read in years,” award-winning author of Atmospheric Disturbances, Associate Professor Rivka Galchen ’06 said in praise of the book. “Intense, tender, and wise, and it reminds us that for each way that a family is split, it is also doubled; and that for each fury, there's a resplendent underside of love."
Order your copy of Tropicália here.
Harold Rogers was born in Steubenville, Ohio to an American father and a Brazilian mother and grew up between the United States and Rio de Janeiro. He holds a BA in philosophy from Miami University in Ohio, and an MFA from Columbia University. He lives in New York City, where he works as a boxing coach and a stand-up comedian.
