The central character of "The Strange Nation of Rafael Mendes" (1983) discovers that he is Jewish after finding his late father's mysterious notebooks, which trace the family's history back to Jonah.
We are a strange nation," shrugs one of the Dutch reporters squinting at Louis van Gaal putting his squad through its paces on a sunny morning at Flamengo's training ground in Rio's upmarket Leblon before Sunday's last-16 match with Mexico.
While the slavery era may serve as a screen on which current conflicts are acted out, the nation is now freeing itself from the old Confederate-dominated paradigm, and can finally see the period from 1790 to 1865 as a deeply stained but defining era in the history of this strange nation.
The "British sense of humour" – that sacrosanct, 20th-century myth which our strange nation, riddled as it is by self-doubt and insecurity, is still so beholden to.
Part satire, part shockumentary, Borat stars Sacha Baron Cohen as the gleefully sexist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic title character on a cross-country trek to learn more about our strange nation; along the way he dredges up the seamy underbelly of American prejudice and ignorance.
