The Volunteers — Moacyr Scliar

In a spare, elegiac tale, physician and novelist Scliar ( The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes , etc.) continues to probe the ethnic diversity of Brazil with a singular cast of nimbly and graphically limned characters. On a December night in 1970, the tugboat Voluntarios sets sail from Porto Alegre; its mission is to bring the dying Benjamin, who is nostalgic for a Wailing Wall that he has never seen, to the legendary city of Jerusalem. The motley crew includes a prostitute; a Palestinian Maronite Christian who left Jerusalem after the Six-Day War; a preacher of a new religious sect, the followers of which are to build a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem; a captain who hasn't navigated a boat in years; and Paulo, the narrator, a self-described ``son of the Portuguese bar owner, this goy.'' Scliar, an acclaimed practitioner of the Latin American technique of blending the mystical and fantastic with reality, here relays his visionsmore bittersweet than ecstatically magicalthrough the defeated narrator, who reminisces about his and Benjamin's escapade-rich childhood, and, like the other voyagers on the doomed boat, seeks a redemptive transcendence tragically beyond his reach. (September)