These stories unveil a world of off the wall figures and lifestyles which are usually not seen or experienced except by those who humbly frequent the little dirty bars of Rio de Janeiro. Originally from southern Bahia, the author has published more than 30 books of various genres, including short stories, novels, humorist sketches, and biographies. He has worked in the Wonder City long enough to have absorbed the tricks and the tastes of the Carioca populace in order to write so movingly and convincingly about their humorous day-to-day encounters and dramatic strives off the beaten tracks of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches. In "Dissimulada e a vida" (Life is a sham), for instance, the narrator compares a woman at a bar in Lapa to Machado de Assis' character, Capitu. Her name is Sandroval. Born male, her parents combined their own names, Sandro and Vale ria, into the son's name. After his 20th glass of beer, the narrator, a journalist, had been enthusiastically talking about injustices perpetrated against prostitutes. He was fully aware of their plight now, after interviewing one of their union representatives. That was when Sandroval approached him. She said she was moved by his speech, but she also invited him to think of all the suffering which transvestites went through in that city, and nobody seemed to care about them. She offered to tell him a sad story, her story, which runs in half a paragraph in that remarkable {cro nica}. Sandroval was the father of two children. As male, he was married to a woman who died right after giving birth to their two children. Sandroval, like Capitu, had deceiving eyes. She was not crying at that Lapa bar. It had been raining, that's all.