An explosive vision of contemporary Brazil’s underbelly by one of our greatest investigative reporters.

This is a book about a man known as Nem; about Rocinha, the slum or “favela” he grew up in and came to run as a private fiefdom; about Rio, the beautiful but damned city that Rocinha exists in; and about the battle for Brazil. Nemesis pans in and out from the arc of Nem’s individual, astonishing trajectory to the wider story of the country that he exists in.

It’s about drugs and gangs and violence and poverty. It’s about a man who made a terribly dangerous and life-altering decision for the best and most understandable of reasons. And it’s about the wider forces at work in a country that is in the world’s spotlight as never before and is set to stay there. Those forces include the evangelical church, bent police and straight police, drug lords, farmers, TV magnates, crusading politicians, and corrupt politicians.

And what they are engaged in is nothing less than the battle for Brazil’s soul.

Misha Glenny is the international bestselling author of McMafia, a finalist for the FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award; DarkMarket, a finalist for the Orwell Prize; The Rebirth of History; The Fall of Yugoslavia, which won the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Book on Foreign Affairs; and The Balkans. He is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines such as the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Globe and Mail, the New Statesman, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times. He lives in London, U.K.

Misha Glenny's profile page

There are no other books like this, in English or even in Portuguese.

Globe and Mail

… reads like a true crime story… Nemesis is a useful and readable introduction to the favela phenomenon…

New York Review of Books

Nemesis is a magnificent work of reportage, by turns raw and courageous.

London Evening Standard

… a gripping profile of a criminal kingpin who works hard to represent himself as an altruist.

Maclean's

Reading Nemesis is like taking a walking tour of Baltimore’s underworld with Stringer Bell.

New York Times