Village of the Ghost Bells

In the village of the ghost bells, the church chimes ringeven though the church has no bells. One of the neighbors wants to buy dreamsor is she a dream that someone else is dreaming? Where and why do dreams become nightmares? These are only some of the fascinating questions raised in Village of the Ghost Bells, Edla Van Steens second novel. First published in 1983 as Coraes mordidos, the novel tells the story of the would-be utopian community built on an old plantation of the outskirts of So Paulo, Brazil. Its atmosphere is dreamlike, often verging on the supernatural, and strange events signal the transformation of the utopian dream into a nightmare. Ultimately destroyed by greed, corruption, and exploitation, the community becomes a microcosm of the Brazilian socioeconomic system, in which it takes all of a persons warmth, idealism, passion, and humor to survive the bleak environment.