What Kind of Country Is This?: On “The Secret Agent”

In late September, a hush had fallen over São Paulo at night, as if everyone had decided to turn in early. The liquor being sold in the city was contaminated with industrial methanol, likely a result of clandestine counterfeiting operations that repackage illegal alcohol in empty bottles. As of this writing, the Health Ministry has confirmed 62 cases of methanol poisoning in Brazil, 48 of them in São Paulo, 16 of them fatal. Other victims have been rendered permanently blind. “If a rich person hadn’t died,” someone told me when I arrived in the city where I grew up, “no one would’ve cared.”