“Paradise is here, hell is here, madness is here, passion is here.” So the lyrics of Francis Hime’s Sinfonía do Rio de Janeiro de São Sabastião, lyrics by Geraldo Carneiro and Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, describe the city of Rio de Janeiro. But Hime’s antipodes only begin a description of Rio’s squatter settlements—our favelas.
In Favela: Four Decades of Living on the Edge in Rio de Janeiro, Janice Perl- man shares with us her experiences, insights, and the results of her research into the madness, passion, paradise, and hell experienced by Rio’s favela dwellers.