“ Heliopolis” is a truly original rags-to-riches tale, reminiscent of Paulo Lins’ “ City of God”, by James Scudamore, the award-winning author of “ The Amnesia Clinic”. As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born & transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the above the sprawling metropolis of São Paulo for a vacuous `communications company’. But this is not his world, & this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo`s destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess & abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness & brutality. What’s all the more impressive is that this genuine depiction of a third world urban sprawl would come from a British writer.