Quatro soldados

"In Brazil in 1754, in the final years of the war against the Jesuit Missions, four young soldiers find their paths intertwining: An ensign who receives his first command though still a teenager, a rigid and melancholy cavalry captain, a deserter who lives off contraband books, and a lieutenant with ambiguous motives. All share the same concern with their own role in the world, as they come and go in the mythical and nebulous space of the Brazilian frontier in the eighteenth century. They will pass through lost labyrinths and fantastic animals, the Enlightenment and the Lisbon Earthquake, and none of them, even the narrator, will emerge unchanged"--Cataloger's translation from page 4 of cover.