Primarily set in Brazil, the novel is often considered a work of magical realism but transgresses many literary genres as it incorporates satire and humor to address themes of globalization, transnationalism, migration, economic imperialism, environmental exploitation, socio-economic inequity, and techno-determinism.
[2][3][4] Loosely following the novela Brazilian soap opera format, Through the Arc of the Rainforest offers brief episodes introducing the major characters that reveal their connections to one another and their relationship to the Matacão.
[5] Told from the first-person perspective of a self-conscious extraterrestrial ball that floats six inches from the head of Kazumasa Ishimaru, a Japanese expatriate who relocates to Brazil in search of job opportunities, the novel details the rise and devastation of an Amazonian community after the discovery of the Matacão, a resilient and seemingly magical and impenetrable black substance found on the floor of the rainforest on the farm of Brazilian farmer Mané Pena.
The presence of the Matacão leads to a variety of conflicts that result in several distinct but interconnected plot strands: As the threads converge, the area experiences a boom of economic and corporate growth and development.
As more people arrive, as more of the Matacão is transformed into commercial products, or used as a site of entrepreneurial opportunity, and Brazil becomes more globally connected the area suffers severe exploitation and deterioration.
Michelle Mabelle is a highly competent French Ornithologist who travels to the Matacão to study the local birds and the magical feathers.
But Yamashita takes the idea of deterritorialization one step further than Tomlinson in that she describes specifically the local natural environment as global and artificial at the same time.
A landscape where digging into the soil leads not to rock or roots but polymer makes implausible any return to nature via the immersion into the local of the kind envisioned by many environmentalist writers.
The native soil itself is deterritorialized in Yamashita's vision, turning into a product of human industry and long-distance connections as much as of the geological processes in the immediate vicinity.
"[7]The text has also been recognized for its post-colonial critique, as Aimee Bahng situates the book in relation to the purchase of 2.5 million acres of Amazon rainforest in Pará, Brazil, by Henry Ford in 1927 to establish a rubber plantation known as Fordlândia: "...Yamashita excavates this largely forgotten scene of US imperialism in Brazil and extrapolates from such imperial legacies what might happen to the Amazon when a valuable, rubbery, and possibly alien resource is unearthed during an age of global restructuring.