On the phone, Raquel Yagoda told her mother’s translator there was no reason for Emma to come to Brazil. It isn’t necessary, she said, and you don’t want to be in the heat wave we’re having now.

Emma continued to insist, however, until Raquel apologized and said that she had to get off the phone. On TV Globo, the news was flashing the same ancient photographs over and over: her mother in a purple polyester pantsuit receiving the Jabuti Prize in 1983, her mother seven months pregnant with Marcus at the book festival in Porto Alegre, her mother in a TV interview when her hair was still dark and thick and her body so thin she folded shut like a fan when she swiveled in a chair.

If you have any information about the South African writer Beatriz Yagoda, the newscaster said, please call the number below.

South African, Raquel repeated, and clicked off the TV. Her mother had left Johannesburg when she was two. Her mother was about as South African as bossa nova.