Brazillionaires

Alex Cuadros

Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

Wealth and power on the trail of the super-rich

In 2012 Brazilian tycoon Eike Batista was the eighth richest man in the world his $30bn fortune built on Brazil's incredible natural resources. By the middle of 2013 he had lost it all engulfed in scandal.

Brazillionaires is a fast-paced account of Batista's rise and fall: a story of helicopter flights beach-front penthouses and high-speed car crashes. Along the way it tells the parallel story of Brazil itself a country caught in the cycle of boom and bust renewed hope and dashed promise; a country where the hyper-rich are at the heart of the economy - and where their wealth can buy immense political power.

Stefan Zweig said in 1941 that Brazil was the country of the future; Brazilians joke that it always will be. Today rampant corruption and endemic inequality threaten to derail the new Brazilian Dream. The brazillionaires are the key to understanding that dream; through them Brazillionaires tells the story of their country's past present and future.