A tale of one man’s flamboyant rise and then his spectacular fall, Le brutaliste pushes the reader into his entrenchments, between attraction and repulsion.
Tomas Taveira is a powerful, rich, famous architect. And a sexual
abuser. Yet he fascinates Matthew. The latter manages to interview him
at length, trying to get as close as possible to the man who, struck by a
resounding scandal, had to interrupt his career.
Who is this man
whose name the narrator will not mention once during the course of the
novel? An avant-garde builder who raised brutalism (architectural
current) to the rank of art or a simple brute without limits? His
watchword has always been: play, have fun, win. The Amoreiras towers
overlooking part of Lisbon represent his victory, but the games he
imposes on the women he works with are vile. He forces them to submit to
his sexual whims in front of a camera and then keeps every trace of his
attacks on tapes. When these recordings are stolen from him, the shock
wave spreads to public opinion: the Brutalist is dragged through the mud
and into the courts.
