In Honduras, paradise and hell are next-door neighbors, and you can hear the gunshots at night from both places.

In his first speech after his victory, Brazil’s far-right president-elect thanked God and praised voters for allowing the country to “march now on the right path.”

The stories of Machado de Assis let us imagine our way into familiar perspectives and situations from unexpected vantages that enlarge and transform our sense of what is and what can be in this life, and the next.

“We are living in calamity, a humanitarian crisis in Honduras. Today they left. Tomorrow they will leave.... Three hundred people leave Honduras every day.”

Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, a Catholic who campaigned to rid the nation of corruption, will take office Jan. 1 with a conservative moral agenda.

In the “current climate” it has evidently become much easier to hate. But it has also easy to feel self-satisfied about doing the smallest amount of good.