The realism in Lima Barreto s literature brought into discussion important questions to the artistic scene in the early 20th century. In the context of a Parnassian literature at its peak, Barretian fiction not only intended to get close to the concrete experiences of life in Brazil s capital, Rio de Janeiro, but also did so by casting over it an inverted look, caricaturing the official city through its other. To think about that literature with the understanding of the changes the aesthetic regime of art was putting into place, as J. Rancière describes it, allows us to understand the way it reaches and builds the surrounding reality, and by doing that, clarifies the struggles it had to overcome to find its place as a possible sensible experience. More than just a change of artistic perspective, Barretian fiction points us to the reorganization of the distribution of the sensible (partage du sensible) within the society of Rio de Janeiro.