Seker Portakali

My Sweet Orange Tree (Şeker Portakalı) is José Mauro de Vasconcelos's autobiographical novel of Zezé, a five-year-old boy growing up in poverty on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Too mischievous and imaginative for his overworked, frequently violent family to understand, Zezé finds solace in Minguinho, the small orange tree in his backyard that he treats as a living confidant.

Everything changes when Zezé befriends Manuel Valadares — "Portuga" — a gentle, wealthy older man who becomes the first adult to see and love the real Zezé. Their friendship gives the boy the tenderness he has been starved of at home, until an event forces Zezé to grow up faster than any child should have to.

Vasconcelos writes childhood without sentimentality, holding its cruelty and its wonder in the same hand. First published in 1968, the novel remains one of the most widely read Brazilian books of the twentieth century and opens the Zezé trilogy.