"Just as the conquerors invented a language to describe an undiscovered landscape and to make it their own, Lins conquers with words the underground world of the favelas—frightening, maddening, claustrophobic, in reality only imaginable in fantastic terms. City of God is an irreproachable and necessary work, an impressive immersion in the dominions of Mr. Hyde."
—El País (Spain)
"Where a river had laughed between vegetable plots and mango and eucalyptus trees, the buildings and shacks of a favela packed themselves in. Violent death, alcohol, drugs took over, with samba to muffle the despair and kites to make the heavens again seem possible. … To write this novel, the author investigated organized crime in the Brazilian shantytowns for years. These crisscrossing stories reveal dreams of happiness that drown in blood under the Rio sun. A dense, compelling book, out of another world."
—Geo (France)
"Rio. It is not only sugar bread, Caetano Veloso songs, guys checking out gorgeous girls on the Copacabana beaches, the glory of soccer and Carnival. … There are also the favelas, impoverished neighborhoods clustered around hills and intimately tangled around the wealthy districts. … Paulo Lins's novel, published in 1997, blew up in the face of those who did not want to be confronted with this reality. … The novel recounts several years in the life of the City of God … ending in a terrible gang war worthy of a Scorsese film. A novel that opens the eyes and shows the enormous humanity that emerges, despite everything, from these children and adults plunged into drugs, crime, and poverty."
—La Libre Belgique (Belgium)
"A novelized record, the fruit of thirty years of observations and ten years of research, narrating in multiple accounts the rise of gangs and danger in poor neighborhoods."
—Libération (France)
"Groups of down-and-out, slum-dwelling drug dealers, without a rigid hierarchy or defined codes of behavior … fighting amongst themselves in a process of permanent self-destruction. Paulo Lins portrays this universe with cutting realism. … [City of God] explodes in the reader's face as gusts of words, disturbing and enlightening the conscience."
—Correio Braziliense