The best and best-known book by Aluísio Azevedo is The Slum (1890). Alongside it, people usually recall O Mulato (1881), regarded as the founding landmark of Brazilian naturalism, Casa de Pensão (1884), and O Homem (1887).
The Slum is the novel in which the tenement of Rio de Janeiro becomes almost a living organism and the central character. O Mulato exposed the prejudice and hypocrisy of the society of Maranhão and caused a scandal in São Luís. Casa de Pensão tells the story of a provincial student in a boarding house in the capital. Casa de Pensão, O Homem, and The Slum belong to the front of the author's work in which he applies the observation of environment and body in the manner of Émile Zola.
Aluísio also wrote fast-paced serials, published in newspapers and paid by the chapter, such as Mistérios da Tijuca and Memórias de um condenado, and a first novel of a romantic bent, Uma lágrima de mulher (1879).
On Clavis: The Slum.