This is the author’s second novel.

In the first, titled Hotel La Solitude, the work was organized into three suits: Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades—representing Irene, Luís, and Vasco; fear, reason, and impulse. None was whole on its own; all were necessary.

One suit was missing: Hearts. The one that observes, contains, and believes it is in control.

O Naipe em Falta is that fourth element. The author steps onto the stage, drops the pretense of distance, and accepts becoming part of the very material he writes.

Three days in a provincial hotel, the same room, a camera, persistent characters, and a ceaseless stream of thought. What emerges is a confrontation with lived experience and with the act of writing itself—fragmentary, contradictory, and at times ironic or absurd.

O Naipe em Falta can be read independently of the previous novel, Hotel La Solitude. However, those familiar with the first book’s three narrators will encounter them here in a different light: not merely as fiction, but as parts of the person who created them.