Aluísio Azevedo's work is marked by the naturalist method, the observation of milieu and body in the manner of Émile Zola, with the Portuguese example of Eça de Queirós alongside, and by a draftsman's eye, formed in the years when he was a caricaturist. His novels work through tableaux, crowds seen from outside, and figures marked by a physical trait.
This raw material is the low life of Rio de Janeiro, which no one had put into a novel before, and it is what, in Otto Maria Carpeaux's reading, saves the novels and makes them also documents of historical sociology. The Slum is the clearest example: the tenement is born from the mud as a living thing, and the crowd that lives there weighs as much as any character.
Aluísio wrote on two fronts, the serial novels of lively plot, paid by the chapter, and the novels observing milieu, and was one of the rare Brazilian writers to try to live from literature alone. Carpeaux calls him "not very original", "a Zola, or rather a Mirbeau of Rio de Janeiro", but says his novels still give the impression of being "full of life".
On Clavis: The Slum.