highlights 2013/2014

Art: www.guilhotinadesign.com
© Gabriel Andrade
HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014
Agência Riff
Lucia Riff
Laura Riff
João Paulo Riff
Roberto Matos
Camila Marandino
[email protected]
www.agenciariff.com.br
Avenida Calógeras nº 6 / sala 1007
20030-070 Rio de Janeiro, RJ – Brasil
phone: 55(21) 2287-6299
fax: 55(21) 2267-6393
INTERNATIONAL CO-AGENTS
PORTUGAL, FRANCE AND SPANISH LANGUAGE
Anne Marie Vallat
[email protected]
www.amvagencialiteraria.com
ENGLISH
Jonah Straus
[email protected]
ALL OTHER LANGUAGES
Nicole Witt
[email protected]
www.mertin-litag.de
FICTION
Adélia PRADO
Adriana LISBOA*
Adriana LUNARDI**
Alberto MARTINS
Alexandre VIDAL PORTO
Antonio PRATA
Ariano SUASSUNA
Arthur DAPIEVE
Beatriz BRACHER
Carlos Herculano LOPES
Cintia MOSCOVICH
Claudia TAJES
Dodô AZEVEDO
Emilio FRAIA
Flávio CARNEIRO
João Luiz Anzanello CARRASCOZA
José Luiz PASSOS*
José Rubem FONSECA***
Kledir RAMIL
Leticia WIERZCHOWSKI
Livia GARCIA-ROZA
Luis Fernando VERÍSSIMO
Lya LUFT
Lygia Fagundes TELLES
Marcelo FERRONI
Marcelo PIRES
Maria Adelaide AMARAL
Maria Valéria REZENDE
Ricardo LÍSIAS
Sérgio RODRIGUES
Tony BELLOTTO
Vanessa BARBARA
Vitor RAMIL
NONFICTION
Carlos DOMINGOS
Eliane BRUM**
Elio GASPARI
Luiz Alberto HANNS
Luiz Eduardo SOARES
Márcia ZOLADZ
Roberto DaMATTA
Vicente de BRITTO PEREIRA
Zuenir VENTURA
CLASSIC AUTHORS
Caio Fernando ABREU
Carlos DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE
Érico VERÍSSIMO
João CABRAL DE MELO NETO
Jorge de LIMA
José Cândido de CARVALHO
Mª Julieta DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE
MILLÔR Fernandes
Mario QUINTANA
Moacyr SCLIAR*
Otto Lara RESENDE
Paulo Emílio SALES GOMES
Paulo Mendes CAMPOS
Paulo RÓNAI
Rachel de QUEIROZ
Ricardo RAMOS
Sérgio PORTO
Brazil only
(*) Nicole Witt
(**) Anja Saile
(***) Carmen Balcells
Adriana FALCÃO
The Machine
A Máquina
Nordestina is a place where no one wants to stay anymore. The only thing that
can be counted in this land without future is the void left by those who want to go
to the other side of the line, where the world must be happening. And is exactly
in this little town - forgotten even by the Lord - that the love between Antônio and
Karina happens.
With a precise and poetic prose, the author constructs a story capable of stopping
time and changing the course of this tale and others that Antônio began to tell
after he looked at his Karina, who, by then, had a look of good-bye, and promised:
“Is it the world that you want? I’ll bring it to you, then”.
“The machine” is a fable about love and time. A love story as big as the world.
“Adriana’s prose has magic. We get enchanted, both in the sense of being delighted, and in the
sense of feeling like an hypnotized snake. Of getting to the end without being quite sure of what has
happened to us.”
Luis Fernando Verissimo
“Adriana shows that making quality work for children is possible, simplifying the sophistication, or
turning simplicity into something sophisticated. The recipe mixes not only a juicy filling (a good story),
but also an innovative design (the form).
Cláudia Nina, Jornal do Brasil
Adriana Falcão was born in Rio de Janeiro, in 1960, but
spent a good portion of her life in Recife, where she’s graduated
in Architecture. She has never worked as an architect, but
certainly uses her architectural skills to create the intricate
structures of her stories, always very amusing and influenced
by the folklore of northeastern Brazil. She has written chronicles
for Veja Rio magazine and for O Estado de São Paulo newspaper.
She is as successful screenwriter working for TV GLOBO.
With an imaginative and humorous prose, Adriana has also
published children’s books, including the bestseller “Mania de
explicação” (published in Mexico and Portugal).
Between Northernville and the town before it was a sign saying “Welcome to Northernville”.
Some say that before Antonio’s time almost no one knew this sign even existed. The people
who lived from the sign inwards imagined a line on the ground separating Northernville
from the rest of the world. The people who lived from the sign outwards didn’t imagine
anything, had never given the subject any thought and hadn’t the foggiest idea that from there on
there was still a bit more.
In Northernville, right there on the next street, lived a girl who half-closed her eyes when she looked
at things, who Antonio was head over heels in love with. To this day nobody knows for sure whether
what drove Antonio crazy was Karina’s half-eyed look or everything else. Everything else
is to be understood as even the perfume that lingered in her wake. Antonio, who was
something different for each person, for Karina was just the young lad who always took a
spin by her house after work. Afterwards things changed, but only afterwards. Only after
everything changed.
Adriana Lisboa
Hanoi
Crow-blue
“Hanoi” is a novel about shiftings, about details that change a destiny, and
about the transience of life. It is also a contemporary story about the meeting of
different cultures and miscegenation.
In her novel “Crow Blue”, Adriana Lisboa tells an unusual road-story of the search
for one’s roots, friendship, and the life of the Brazilian guerillas.
Hanoi
Azul-corvo
David is Brazilian, son of a Mexican mother and a Brazilian father. Alex is a girl that
comes from a lineage of Vietnamese women that got involved with Americans;
first, during the Vietnam war, now in Chicago, where both she and David try to
survive, bypassing adversities. They are immigrant’s children, living in a mix
of habits and cultures, in a mosaic of identities that many times pervades the
contemporary world. Alex is a single mother, and she tries to reconcile study and
work in the Asian market. David is in his thirties, loves jazz, plays the trumpet,
and would have had the future ahead of him, if it wasn’t for unexpected news: he
was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
By intertwining these two disparate lives, the author creates a story about love
and determination, but also about acceptance and abnegation, in which the
choices of one person can change the destiny of those around them.
Vanja is only thirteen when her mother Suzana dies of an illness. She decides to
move from her hometown of Rio de Janeiro to her mother’s ex-husband Fernando
in the US to look for her father Daniel, whom she has never met. Fernando, an
ex-guerilla from Brazil, is willing to take care of her, even though Vanja’s mother
left him long before Vanja was born. A charismatic character, Suzana is still
present for both of them, and Vanja keeps discovering more and more about her
mother through Fernando’s memories. He also tells her how he used to fight in
the marshes of the River Araguaia.
The novel is separated into two parts, alternatingly relating Vanja’s search for
her father, linked to her coming-of-age, and Fernando’s life as a guerilla. This
contrast, present both in language and content, gives the narration a depth of
its own. In fluid and beautiful language, Adriana Lisboa authentically creates the
cosmos of a 13-year-old girl, turning the story into a literary road movie.
A transcultural book with a marvellous narrator which without any doubt
will be a great success.
Cristovão Tezza, writer
Adriana Lisboa, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1970, spent her childhood and
youth in that city and on her parents’ fazenda. Later she lived in Brasília, Paris
and Avignon. She studied Music and Literature and worked as a flautist, singer
and music teacher. Today she devotes herself entirely to writing and translating.
In 1999, after publication of her first novel Os Fios da Memória (The Threads
of Memory), she was celebrated as the new star of recent Brazilian literature.
In 2003 she received the José Saramago Prize for young authors for her novel
Symphony inWhite. In 2007, she was selected by the Hay Festival and by the
organisers of the Bogotá World Book Capital as one of the 39 highest profile
Latin American writers under the age of 39. [www.adrianalisboa.com.br]
Rights sold:
Argentina: 2011, Edhasa
França: Métailié
(rights reverted)
UK: 2013, Bloomsbury
Circus
Awards:
Finalist of the São Paulo
Literature Award
Finalist of the Passo Fundo
Zaffari & Bourbon Award
Adriana Lisboa
Symphony in White
Adriana Lisboa cuenta con una madurez sorprendente episodios que podrían estar
–y están- en la Biblia. Con naturalidad y esa madurez cambia de paisaje, entra en los
ambientes cosmopolitas y luego regresa a un mundo de costumbres rurales y de silencios.
Nada escapa al bisturí de la autora, el amor, el odio, el desprecio, el crimen, la expiación,
la imposibilidad del olvido. Juega con el tiempo como si fuera elástico o una pantalla en la que todo
es presente, por eso las hermanas crecen o son niñas, mujeres maduras a veces, otras derrotadas,
perseverantes, incapaces o fuertes para darle forma al despecho y al rencor. Todo se cruza, pasa por
las páginas, atrapa al lector con la evidencia de que en las manos tiene un libro de peso, no son fuegos
artificiales o moda de un día porque este libro cuenta con estilo propio pasiones humanas, describe
la materia de la que estamos hechos todos, escritores, lectores y personajes y lo hace con voz poética
y moderna, sin artificios pero con la complejidad de quien domina el oficio, también llamado arte de
escribir.
Sinfonia em Branco
“Symphony in White”, the internationally-acclaimed novel by prize-winning
Brazilian author Adriana Lisboa, follows the journeys — literal, chronological, and
metaphysical — of two sisters raised in the apparently tranquil backlands of Brazil
in the sixties and educated in teeming Rio de Janeiro in the seventies. Sisters
who share dark secrets that affect every step of their way as they finally face their
past so that they might at last embrace their future.
But “Symphony in White” is much more than compelling storytelling or a novel of
Brazilian manners and culture. Lisboa also makes numerous references to music
and art throughout the novel, which in itself is not unlike a symphony where each
character’s storyline represents a different instrument of a symphonic score,
resulting in a dramatic and powerful work of great beauty and harmony. Add
to that the pure pleasure of Lisboa’s eloquent metaphors, her lyrical, poetic
prose, and her unexpected word choices, which allow the reader to examine the
dark abysses of the human soul within a framework as delicate as the flight of
a butterfly. Like all great literature, “Symphony in White” is a book of universal
appeal that transcends all geographic borders.
By Sarah Green
Adriana Lisboa effectively succeeds in capturing the poetry inherent in
the everyday, weaving her words into a symphony of silences.
Henrique Rodrigues, A Tribunada da Imprensa
“Symphony in White” is the proof of an excellent writer […] and a vital
sign of life indicating the very latest in Brazilian literature awaiting our
discovery, urgently so...
José Eduardo Agualusa, writer
We have here a writer for the future and I hope to live long enough to
accompany her at least half way along her chosen path. She holds great
promise and has already accomplished a great deal as an author.[…] I
would say that here we have an author for now and for later, since no-one
who has reached the point she has achieved will simply stay put there.
Saramago, in October 2003, on the occasion of awarding the José Saramago Prize.
An absorbing intrigue, an elegant style: With “Symphony in White”, the
Brazilian writer Adriana Lisboa creates the mo st enchanting novel of
the season. Unmissable.
Elle
Rights sold :
France: 2009, Métailié
Italy: Angelica Editore
Mexico: 2009, Alfaguara
Portugal: 2003, Temas
e Debates
Romenia: Univers
US: 2010, Texas Tech
University Press
Awards:
José Saramago Award
Finalist of the Prix des
Letrices of “Elle”
Han pasado años desde que leí el libro que tiene en las manos, querido lector, pero para pergeñar
estas líneas no he necesitado volver a él, tan nítido y fresco permanece en mi experiencia lectora.
Cuando las noticias de los medios de comunicación dan cuenta de situaciones como las que esta obra
refleja –el incesto- la imágenes recurrente para explicar lo inexplicable, es decir, el sufrimiento y los
miedos de la víctima, me llegan de este libro. Y la liquidación del asunto, tal como sucede en la novela,
es lo segundo que se me plantea: solo el uso de la razón es capaz de evitar el aplauso de la atrocidad
que es justificar que cada cual aplique la justicia tal y como la entienda.
Brasil, este nuestro tiempo, todos los tiempos. La complicidad de unas hermanas, el amor, el crimen,
el manto de silencio que todo lo quiere ignorar, el castigo, la conciencia luminosa, la frivolidad, los
deseos fuertes de vivir, esculpir una obra que no muera, ni sienta, ni sufra, de viajar lejos
de uno mismo para volver a uno mismo limpio, intocado, perfecto… Con estas notas y otras
más está compuesta la Sinfonía en blanco que Adriana Lisboa escribió siendo casi una
niña y cautivó a un escritor que ya era mayor y sabio. Por eso este libro lleva el sello Premio
José Saramago. Nada más y nada menos.
preface by Pilar Del Rio
ALBERTO MARTINS
LIVIA AND THE AFRICAN CEMETERY
LIVIA E O CEMITÉRIO AFRICANO
An architect in crisis with a senile mother, a teenage nephew who suffers from
a degenerative disorder and the unsettling Lívia — his dead brother’s girlfriend
who, along with her mysterious travels and an obscure interest in archaeology,
both illuminates and confuses the protagonist’s journey. This is the basic core of
“Lívia and the African cemetery”, a tense, yet crystalline account that manages
to, while questioning the limits of storytelling, reaffirms the regenerative power
of narratives with a disconcerting precision and practically infinite capacity for
suggestion.
“‘Lívia and the African cemetery’ never abandons what seems to be its
essential theme — the relationship between extinction and the vestigial
— a piercing look at what is able to survive the devastating effects of
time. As one his characters says: ‘Every story heard is composed of
echoes of other stories. But it is no less true for all that.’ There is no
better way to describe the shattered brilliance of this fascinating and
original novel.”
Chico Mattoso
Excerpt page 128
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen? Can you run fast?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll give you a fifteen-minute head start. It’s a bet. You have fifteen minutes
to escape.”
Guido saw the man rummage in a small, leather sack hung around his neck,
spread out the tobacco on the palm of his hand and then insert a small amount in the
corner of his mouth, up against his gums.
“That’s a lot more than most people got in this war.”
The rifle was on the ground, by a rock.
“Or you can come back with me and face trial.”
He paused.
ALBERTO MARTINS, born in 1958, in Santos, São Paulo state, writer and
printmaker has published, among others, the books Goeldi: Horizon Story
(1995), for which he received the Jabuti Prize; Docks (2002); A History
of Bones (2005), which won a Portugal Telecom Award for Brazilian
Literature; the play A Night in Five Acts (2009) and the book of poems
In Transit (2010), for which he received honourable mentions in the
Moacyr Scliar Literature Award. In 2011, Martins took part in the Bellagio
Center residency program of the Rockfeller Foundation, in Italy, where he
concluded the novel Lívia e o cemitério africano, published in June 2013
and shortlisted for the Zaffari Bourbon Literature Award of this year.
“But, in that case, you won’t even get your fifteen minutes” — the man laughed
and spat out a dark wad.
ALEXANDRE VIDAL PORTO
SERGIO Y.
SERGIO Y.
Sergio Y., a 17-year-old son of the privileged elite in São Paulo, decides to seek
therapy as an attempt to become a happier person. Over the course of a year, he
diligently sees Dr. Armando, his 70-year-old therapist. However, after a vacation
trip to New York, Sergio announces that he is quitting therapy on grounds that he
has found “his way to happiness”. Years later, after an accidental meeting with
Sergio’s mother, Dr. Armando is surprised to learn about the unexpected course
the life of his patient has taken.
The story of Sergio Y., as told by his therapist, is shocking. Yet it is optimistic and
upbeat. A page-turner and a gem of a novel, Sergio Y. goes to America has been
awarded the Paraná Literary Prize for best unpublished novel. Its commercial
edition will appear in March 2014 by Companhia das Letras.
Sergio Y.
march/14
Awards:
Paraná Literature Award
“In Sergio Y. vai à América, Alexandre Vidal Porto speculates deeply
on how we give direction to our lives and shows why he is one of the
essential writers in Brazilian contemporary literature.”
Luiz Ruffato, writer.
“It is impossible for the reader to put the book down.”
José Castello, writer and literary critic for “O Globo”.
ALEXANDRE VIDAL PORTO e was born in São Paulo. A career diplomat
and Harvard-trained lawyer, he writes a regular column on current
affairs for Folha de São Paulo and currently lives in Tokyo, Japan.
As a ficcionist, his work has appeared in some of the most respected
literary journals in Brazil. He is the author of two novels: Matias na
cidade/Matias in the city, published by Editora Record to critical acclaim
in 2005, and Sergio Y. vai à América/Sergio Y. goes to America , winner
of the Paraná Literary Prize, to appear in March 2014, by Companhia
das Letras. [www.alexandrevidalporto.com]
ANTONIO PRATA
Naked in Boots
ALMOST COMPLETELY HAPPILY EVER AFTER
In “Naked in boots”, Antonio Prata revisits the most memorable events of his
childhood. The memoirs are illuminations about the first years of the author’s
life, told with the precision and humor to which his thousands of readers have
become accustomed in Folha de São Paulo, newspaper in which Prata has a
weekly column since 2010. The first memories of his backyard, the neighborhood
friends, the vacations at the beach, the divorce of his parents, the Halley comet,
Bozo and SBT cartoons, the first love, the sex discovered in porn magazines —
all the sentimental education of a middle-class boy from São Paulo, born in the
1970s, is shown in “Naked in boots”. What is striking, however, is the peculiarity
of his perspective. The texts are not the memories of the adult looking back and
reviewing his journey with nostalgia or detachment. On the contrary, the author
returns to the point of view of the child, who is amazed by the world and gives a
very particular sense to it — a funny, mysterious, lyric, and enchanted one.
Everybody knows that a good fairy tale ends with the princess and her prince
charming living happily ever after. But what few people know is what happens or
does not happen when the story ends. Antonio Prata and the renowned Brazilian
cartoonist Laerte show here, in delicious detail, how this so called perfect life
is, and how “happily ever after” can become a big problem. And they prove, with
lots of fun, that even in the enchanted world a little unhappiness now and then
doesn’t hurt anyone. (English & Spanish translations available).
Nu de Botas
Felizes Quase Sempre
Antonio Prata was born in São Paulo in 1977. He majored
in Social Sciences and has published ten books, including
Meio intellectual, meio de esquerda (Editora 34, 2010), which
received the Prêmio Brasília de Literatura in the short stories
and chronicles category, and Felizes quase sempre (Editora
34, 2012), finalist of the Jabuti award, in the children’s books
category (the results will come out in mid-October). Prata has a
Sunday column in the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, and also
works as a screenwriter for movies and TV. He has written, along
with Chico Mattoso, the episode directed by Fernando Meireles
in the movie Rio, eu te amo (from the series NY I love you, and
Paris Je t’aime, to be released in 2014), and was in the team of
writers of the soap operas Bang Bang (2006), and Avenida Brasil
(2012), from Rede Globo.
Some of his chronicles were translated to English and can be
read on the website Words Without Borders:
http://wordswithoutborders.org/article/four-cronicas
Ariano Suassuna
WORKS
The Rogues’ Trial
O Auto da Compadecida
“The Rogues’ Trial”, which was turned into a TV miniseries and adapted into
three movie versions, achieves the perfect balance between popular tradition
and literary sophistication, recreating in the theatre events that appear in the
popular tradition of pamphlet literature. The play, an undisputed milestone of
Brazilian dramaturgy, was translated into several languages and staged in the
four corners of the world. Celebrated by the critic, enthusiastically received by the
public, it also received many awards.
Novels
Romance d’a Pedra do Reino e O Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-volta – 1972, José Olympio
História do Amor de Fernando e Isaura – 2006, José Olympio
Non-fiction
Iniciação à Estética – 1975, José Olympio
Almanaque Armorial – 2008, José Olympio
Drama
Auto da Compadecida – 1957, Agir
O Casamento Suspeitoso – 1961, José Olympio
Uma Mulher Vestida de Sol – 1964, José Olympio
O Santo e a Porca – 1964, José Olympio
A Pena e a Lei – 1971, Agir
A Farsa da Boa Preguiça – 1973, José Olympio
Os Homens de Barro – 1949, 2011, José Olympio
Ariano Suassuna (João Pessoa, 1927) is one of the biggest
names of Brazilian literature. He is a novelist, playwriter,
poet, professor, and thinker, with works translated into
many languages. He is the founder of the Teatro Popular do
Nordeste and the Movimento Armorial, which aims at creating
highbrow Brazilian art based on popular tradition. If it were
really possible to synthesize the extensive and complex work of
Ariano Suassuna, one might say that it is a universal synthesis
of the popular culture of Northeastern Brazil.
Arthur Dapieve
Black Music
From Each Love You Shall Get Nothing
But Scorn
Black Music
De Cada Amor Tu Herdarás Só o Cinismo
This novel set up in a favela in Rio de Janeiro tells the story of the kidnapping
of 13 year- old Michael Philips by the 17 year-old drug dealer He-Man, who
dreams of being a famous rapper. His girlfriend, Jô, sister of a former prostitute,
is responsible for taking care of the kidnapped.
In this relationship — fuelled by sex, music, violence, and threatened dreams —
anger and fear give way to feelings of friendship, compassion, and love. Arthur
Dapieve offers to the readers an insight, not only disturbing, but also delicate
and good-humoured.
“‘Black Music’ is a new way of narrating violence”;
Radio Antena 3, Portugal
Rights sold:
France: 2012, Asphalte
Portugal: 2010, Quetzal “It instigates when it averts from stereotypes”.
O Globo
The initial setup is a concert of the rock group R.E.M. Dino, a 46 years old
advertiser, married with two children, and Adelaide, the irresistible redhead intern
from the firm, begin a torrid affair that, little by little, turns into a melancholic love
story. The book covers 15 weeks of the affair, with Dino’s generation soundtrack
— Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Joy Division — and the bohemian geography of Rio de
Janeiro as background, making references to soccer and music. “From Each Love
You Shall Get Nothing But Scorn” also relates to Dino Buzzati’s novel “A Love
Affair”, revealing the metalinguistic game of Lolita-as-a-literary-genre: the mature
man is called Dino, like the Italian, and the girl is Adelaide, like the Milanese
prostitute.
“A disturbing novel about love in modern days”.
Wook website, Portugal
“Gorgeous novel”.
“Vigorous, imaginative”.
Fórum newspaper, Portugal
Jornal do Brasil
Arthur Dapieve (Rio de Janeiro, 1963) is a journalist, music critic,
writer, and Journalism professor at PUC-Rio. Since 1993, he writes a
weekly column for O Globo. Novelist, his books have been published in
France and Portugal. Currently, Arthur Dapieve is immersed in a new
novel.
Rights sold:
Portugal: 2009, Quetzal
Beatriz Bracher
GOLD MINING
Antonio
Compilation of the most recent short stories by Beatriz Bracher, written between
2009 and 2012, “Gold Mining” presents nine texts that take the characteristic
formal experimentations and lyricism of the award-winning author of “Antonio”
and “Meu amor” further. From a conversation on a chat site, in “Michel e Flora”,
to the longest story, that gives title to the book, written as entries in a journal, and
a screenplay draft in “Para um filme de amor”, the narratives are part of a literary
project that seeks, as define by Ricardo Lísias, “to illuminate the breaches in
language through historic uneasiness and an intimate dive into the characters”.
This polyphonic narrative, in which each chapter gives voice to one of the three
narrators-characters, reveals Beatriz’s immense ability to articulate the general
and the particular, the individual and the historic, creating characters unique and
clearly identifiable in their social context at the same time.
garimpo
Antonio
The main character, Benjamim, about to become a father, discovers a family
secret, and decides to hear from all the people involved. Three of them — his
grandmother, Isabel; Haroldo, a friend of his grandfather; and Raul, a friend of
his father — will tell him their version of the facts, and it’s by gathering these
broken pieces of memory of others that Benjamim will assemble the puzzle of
his family’s history.
“Beatriz Bracher’s family narrative draws a contrast between apathy
and guilt in different generations [...]
“Bia Bracher is able to bring up, in such a natural way, a subject that
many stubbornly avoid, and its density is so fluently expressed, that those
dialogues sound new and reveal us the extent of our conformation.”
Noemi Jaffe
Beatriz Bracher (São Paulo, 1961) graduated in Literature and
Writing. She was the editor of Literature and Philosophy magazine 34
Letras, and one of the founders of Editora 34, where she worked for eight
years. She was awarded with the Clarice Lispector Award (Biblioteca
Nacional) in 2009. Beatriz is also an award winner screenwriter.
Rights sold:
Uruguay: 2013, Yaugurú
Germany: 2013,
Assoziation A
AWARDS:
Jabuti Prize (3rd place)
Portugal Telecom Award
(2nd place)
finalist of the São Paulo
Literature Award
Beatriz Bracher
Blue and Hard
My Love
This explosive novel, written in a dizzying, harsh and yet lyrical way tells the
story of Mariana, a 42 year old woman who lives in Rio de Janeiro and that
absentmindedly runs over and kills a girl from her neighborhood. Years later,
while skiing in Switzerland, the accident comes back to her mind, triggering a
moral crisis and a questioning about her social status and her marriage to a
successful lawyer.
“My Love” includes eighteen short narratives by the author, plus a poem, ‘My
Love”, that closes the book and lends its title. Written and rewritten between
2004 and 2008, these texts, although disparate at first glance, are intimately
linked by a critical and at the same time loving view on life in contemporary Brazil.
Sometimes it is a painful and subtle subjectivity that emerges and touches us;
sometimes it is the urban violence that explodes bluntly in the face of the reader;
other times it’s the characters from the wilderness of Minas Gerais that show
themselves in all their humanity, without concessions to the picturesque.
Azul e Dura
“‘Blue and Hard’ is a novel of extraordinary strength and beauty”
Meu Amor
O Estado de São Paulo
“Bracher is intense and precise in her work about existential tearing
apart [...]”
Marcelo Pen
I Didn’t Tell
Não Falei
The narrator of this novel is a Professor who, shortly before moving into another
city, reflects about the armed struggle period in Brazil, from the 1960’s to the
1970’s, and the contradictions it brought to the country and to his life.
This book talks of the Brazilian imagination that transforms into heroes those
that fought in 1968 and are now in power. And, principally, of betrayal and its
value in the educational process of any one of us.
“History is not always written by the victors, despite how the saying
goes. There are powerful people who prefer to speak on behalf of the
forgotten. In ‘I Didn’t Tell’ [...] author Beatriz Bracher turns her second
novel into an emotional essay on the “internal exile” of those who have
fought against the arbitrary rule of the military dictatorship that was
imposed 40 years ago. [...] ”
Antonio Gonçalves Filho
This variety is one of the strengths of the book, which shows the boldness with
which Beatriz experiments and questions the limits that divide not only literary
genres, but also urban and rural territories in Brazilian literary imaginary,
without slipping in anachronic regionalism or journalistic realism, and leaving
the door ajar to the unexpected, to everyday poetry, sometimes raw, sometimes
transpicuous.
“My Love” received the Clarice Lispector award, from the National Library
Foundation, for the best book of short stories of 2009.
“Beatriz Bracher fears no risks in her brutal short stories. [...]”
Alcir Pécora
AWARDS:
Clarice Lispector Award,
from the National Library
Foundation, for the best
book of short stories of
2009.
Cintia Moscovich
SUCH A BRILLIANT THING, THE RAIN
ESSA COISA BRILHANTE QUE É A CHUVA
An anthological portrait by Cintia Moscovich. With great originality and sensitivity,
in each story she is able to describe topics both unexceptional and inevitable
of life — the jealousy a son feels towards his mother, the arrival of a dog at
home, gray hair appearing before time, accepting the sudden death of a father
—, creating an unexpected emotional tension between them and grabbing the
reader’s attention from beginning to end. “Such a brilliant thing, the rain” offers
a collection of stories that shows the most different prisms of family relations,
giving the reader a unique and rare experience. In the words of the writer Martha
Medeiros, “if you think the title is too long and difficult to remember, memorize
only one word: brilliant.”
Cíntia Moscovich (Porto Alegre, 1958) is a writer, journalist and has
a Master’s Degree in Literary Theory. She was a book editor for the
daily newspaper Zero Hora and has worked as translator, copy-editor,
press assistant, literary consultant and teacher, as well as having
directed Rio Grande do Sul’s state Book Institute. Jewish thematic
elements are strongly present in her writing. Her first solo work, the
short story collection O Reino das cebolas (The Kingdom of Onions),
was shortlisted for the Jabuti award. She is also the author of a wellpraised novel, Duas iguais (Two Equals) and additional volumes of
short stories. [www.cintiamoscovich.com]
“The dammed emotions of the situations, that always seem on the verge of overflowing, are contained
and shifted by the humor and the pathetic aspects of characters and situations, but also by the skill
the author uses to hide, until the last lines, the outcome and the meaning of the texts, usually in a
positive and hopeful tone.”
Bruno Zeni, Folha de São Paulo
“Nothing seems to shake Cintia Moscovich’s serenity and contemplative rigor. She doesn’t write to
surprise or upset, but to reveal and unite. Neither is she interested in the void, the ellipse and the
submerged, currently considered to be almost sacred literary values; on the contrary, she searches
for light and simplicity. Cintia seems to be fueled by a primitive fury, as if she wished to get closer to
reality so she can embrace it.”
José Castello, O Globo
Cintia Moscovich
Why Am I Fat, Mommy?
Rainbow’s Architecture
A writer puts on forty-eight and a half pounds in only four years. How could she
have completely lost control of her own body and never even realize it? Could
the roots of the problem lie in her past, in the family history, in all the love —
and hate — shared by children and their parents? These are the questions that
guide journalist Cíntia Moscovich’s highly praised novel. As the narrator searches
for the reasons why she put on so much weight so quickly, she embarks on a
journey through memory focused on her Jewish family of European immigrants,
and especially on her strained relationship with her mother. At the end of this
very personal and often painful journey, not only does she find her own lost body,
but also the strength to become a full-fledged writer.
“Rainbow’s Architecture” comprises ten short-stories that occur in the Jewish
neighborhood of Porto Alegre, a Brazilian city with a recognized Jewish immigrant
community since the early 1900’s. Divided in two parts, the stories have a
large sense of humor with much irony, qualities that distinguish Cintia Moscovich’s
writings. Touching life’s extreme situations, the stories also find a young girl
suddenly facing evil and antisemitism along with a teenager desiring to become a
writer while defying her parents’ life choice. “Rainbow’s Architecture” is coloured
with vivid eroticism, sensuality and tenderness. Por Que Sou Gorda, Mamãe?
“In a Cíntia Moscovich’s book, I found one of those sentences that fill
us with envy. To feel envious is not nice at all, I know. But sometimes it
is as nasty as it is unavoidable. Being human has its ugliness. We want
to steal. But then, when there is no other way, we can only surrender
ourselves to the evident fruition of the greatness of others.”
Valter Hugo Mãe, O Público de Lisboa
Arquitetura do Arco-íris
Rights Sold:
Italy: 2009, Cavallo di
Ferro
AWARDS:
Açorianos Literature Award,
Book of the Year and Novel
(2007)
This work has been nominated for several literary prizes in Brazil and has been
published in Portugal and Spain.
Rights Sold:
Portugal: 2008,
Pergaminho
AWARDS:
Jabuti Prize (3rd place,
2005)
Açorianos Literature Award,
short stories (2005)
Claudia Tajes
HOT BLOOD
Sex Life of the Ugly Woman
“Hot Blood” presents 24 short stories about anger in its various manifestations,
from the subtle ones to the more desperate. Still, the tone is not of tragedy. The
stories are little tragicomedies where grace usually wins from disgrace.
“The ugly woman is not simply an aesthetical deformation. The ugly woman is a
frame of mind.” This is how the protagonist of Claudia Tajes’ Sex Life of the Ugly
Woman describes her own situation. Jucianara is an ugly woman – not extremely
ugly, because those are considered by some people to have their own sort of
charm, but plain ugly in a way that can both make her invisible or have her stand
out in the most embarrassing way. This is the fate of ugly women that the world
does not treat in the same way as it does the pretty ones. Jucianara learns this
at a very early age, and she uses the material provided by her own life to draw
a portrait of every ugly woman’s fate in modern society. Candid, witty and often
outright hilarious, the book follows Jucianara’s misadventures throughout life,
from the different treatment received from her family and friends at school to
her adult love life.
SANGUE QUENTE
A Vida Sexual da Mulher Feia
The book is divided in two parts, Anger at the World, and Specific Anger. On the
first one, everything fuels the rage of the characters: a soccer game, the advices
from a mother, an old habit, the barking of a dog. On the second one, the topic
is PMS, with the hardships that this troubled period of time can bring to the lives
of men and women. Unstable and lost, the characters of the book can lose their
minds, but without ever losing their humor.
Rights sold:
Croatia: 2009, Algoritam Italy: 2008, Cavallo di
Ferro
Vengeful
Por Isso Eu Sou Vingativa
“Vengeful” addresses a wish recurring for most people, yet seldom fulfilled: to
take revenge for the humiliation and injuries they have suffered. Sara Gomes, the
leading character, owner of a bankrupt laundry service store, lists eight men that,
from her point of view, despised her in the past, and moves on to revenge. Will
this all pay off? Claudia Tajes leaves it for the reader to decide.
The cable channel Multishow acquired rights to produce a miniseries based on
the novel.
Claudia Tajes was born in Porto Alegre in 1963 and spent many
years working as a writer in advertising until she started writing fiction
in 2000. Author of more than ten books, among novels and short
story collections, she was soon noticed for her ability to turn tragedy
into comedy, weaving stories full of irony and good humor in a fresh,
unmistakable style.
Rights sold:
Croatia: 2009, Algoritam Italy: 2008, Cavallo di
Ferro
Dodô Azevedo
On the Road Again
Fé na Estrada
In 2003, writer Dodô Azevedo and photographer Luiza Leite decided to travel the
route taken by American author Jack Kerouac in the 1950s and that inspired him
to write the classic “On the Road”.
The idea was to find out what of beatnik and counterculture still existed in the
21st century’s USA. Without any experience in travelling, and with very little
money, the task proved to be an adventure. Navajos, hallucinations from peyote
tea, and federal agents who mistook the author for an Arab terrorist: everything
that happens to the two foreigners during this unpredictable journey puts them
face to face with the simultaneous feeling of deep hatred and love for the
American culture.
From the point of view of a foreigner from the 21st century, Dodô lived this very
original story that originated the novel “On the Road Again”.
There was a time we’d travel a thousand miles for a good conversation, poet Gary Snyder
once said about his generation, the beat writers who built the foundations of the United
States counterculture in the 1950s and laid the groundwork for the country’s 1960s
protest movements. The road was the way to link the restless minds of his generation.
Writer Dodô Azevedo traveled six thousand miles to get from Brazil to America’s east coast and
from there to lose himself on the trails of ‘On the Road’, the book-cum-manifesto that heralded the
appearance of this brilliant, risk-taking generation that made the beat movement and unending
experimentation its reason for being. Azevedo read Kerouac’s book when he was 18 but only decided
to head for the United States after the twin towers had fallen, precisely when Bush’s America had
become as square and xenophobic as McCarthy’s, something the Beats had felt in their skin and
bones, and had fought against.
Born of this quest, ‘On the Road Again’ is not steeped in nostalgia. Much to the contrary, it is a
vibrant, burning account of contemporary America, a country made of contradictory urges, that
Azevedo “loves and hates” at the same time. The libertarian spirit of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady,
Allen Ginsberg, Bill Burroughs, and the other impure poets of the generation that ignited
a behavioral revolution in Western culture can be found on every page of this book. But
there’s more to it than that. ‘On the Road Again’ is an original, always surprising tale
seasoned with a biting sense of humor and an ability to laugh at itself, while seeking in
the Other an answer to its myriad questions.
Preface by Walter Salles
Dodô, or Luiz Fernando Azevedo, has been a journalist for 16
years, having collaborated with Folha de São Paulo and O Globo
newspapers. He holds a Master’s Degree in Literature from PUC-Rio,
and divides his time between the activities as professor of Literature
and Philosophy, writer, musician, and DJ. “To write is to DJ words”, he
defines, explaining that his versatility was considered natural during
the Renaissance.
Flávia Lins e Silva
Mururu in the Amazon
“My love for the Anavilhanas was a head-over-heels thing: I dived in. I had never felt such
an urge to pour myself out in a single place before. I let my ears go numb underwater and,
little by little, moss started sprouting on my body, telling me: stay, stay... The first time, I
didn’t stay. So, I had to go back. Now all I want is to let the moss cover me because getting
a mantle of moss is something magical that doesn’t happen anywhere else. You receive your mantle
and go green all over. Those who choose this moss make a pact of time: forever.
Mururu no Amazonas
Mururu is a little tree trunk, a boat for just one person, that sails like a loose
leaf in the vastness of the Amazon waters. Mururu is the little tree trunk of a
young girl that presents herself being just like her name — Andorinha. Dorinha
leaves her mother and her floating house to search for her father, but finds
Piú instead, a half-indian, a young man that tastes like fruit and smells like
earth. Dorinha crosses the junction of the crystal waters of the Rio Negro with
the muddy broth of the Solimões and becomes a woman. Winner of the FNLIJ
award for YA literature in 2011.
A kiskadee mistakes me for a plant and lands on my shoulder, colouring me delicately. I accept its
feathery affection, but our rendezvous is short-lived. A screech comes from the forest, tearing the air
and driving all beauty far away.
Rights sold:
Serbia: (forthcoming)
Carabina Knjiga
Awards:
João-de-Barro Award, for YA
literature (2006)
Highly Recommend for
Young Adults, by the
National Foundation of
Children and YA Book
A dry cry comes from the forest and I beg time to make the screeching stop. The nervous, metallic
sound of a saw arrives, without waiting, without afterwards. I touch the water in parting and dress my
feet for the forest. I don’t understand land. I have to move carefully so as not to rouse the animals.
On land there may be snakes, ants, scorpions. I look at everything from afar. Tells fall on trees and
the land is gradually stripped naked. I can’t bear so much end.
Who is that hugging the cedar as if he were a vine? He is clinging to the last tree as if it were a person.
The saw continues screeching, cutting down time and history. So many roots torn up, so much life
piled up on the ground. The logs are taken downriver and the forest cloaks itself in darkness. It is a
day of mourning.
The boy’s feet are firmly planted. He doesn’t let go of the trunk. He doesn’t shout or speak. He is
trying to protect that life with his body, but here comes the screeching. On an impulse, I take his hand
and pull him into my dugout canoe. He gets in with me, but he has the lost, sad gaze of
one who has seen the land die a little more without being able to do anything. I look at
him and realize: lots of water outside, lots of silence inside.”
Flavia Lins e Silva is an author of books for children and teenagers, with
more than 15 books published. She also works as a Cinema and TV Shows
screenwriter. In 2004, she got a scholarship from Eisenhower Fellowship to
specialize in entertainment for children. Her most famous character, Pilar, is
a curious girl that loves to travel and discover myths and stories from several
different cultures. Pilar has been in adventures in places like Egypt, Greece,
Amazonas (Brazil), and Machu Pichu (Peru).
Flávia Lins e Silva
THE DETECTIVES OF THE BLUE BUILDING
OS DETETIVES DO PRÉDIO AZUL
You can call me Capim. Detective Capim. That’s the beginning of the Detectives
of the Blue Building, a series of stories told by the young Capim, son of the new
doorman of the Blue Building. Capim will join the youngs Mila and Tom to solve
some strange misteries that happen inside the famous Blue Building. With four
short stories, Capim reveals some spy technics used by him and his friends
when they need to find a diamond ring that disappeared, to notice there is a
robber inside the building or even to save the crazy Land lady from the hands
of a fake dance teacher.
THE PILAR SERIES
Flavia’s most famous character is Pilar, a curious girl that loves to travel and discover
myths and stories from several different cultures. Pilar has been in adventures in
places like Egypt, Greece, Amazonas (Brazil), and Machu Pichu (Peru). Her books
have been sold to Germany, France, Latin America, Croacia and China. Books from
the series:
PILAR’S DIARY OF GREECE (2010)
Pilar loves travelling. Her series of books is well known in Brazil. Now she keeps
a diary, describing every moment of her first adventure. She grew up without her
dad, in her grandpa’s house. When Pilar’s grandpa goes to Greece and she hears
that he is never coming back, she cannot accept it and wishes she could go after
him. With a magic hammock, she and her best friend Breno travel to Greece and
meet several gods along the way. But life among them isn’t easy and no one will
ever be the same after this adventure.
Rights sold:
Germany: S. Fisher
Argentina: (forthcoming), Vergara & Riba
China: (forthcoming), Shanghai Bbt Communication
France: (forthcoming), Bayard
PILAR’S DIARY IN THE AMAZON (2011)
On the second book, Pilar travels to the Amazon, searching for her father, that she
never met. He is an anthropologist and might be lost in the Jungle. She gets in
touch with many Amazonian myths during her search.
Rights sold:
Germany: S. Fisher
Argentina: (forthcoming), Vergara & Riba
China: (forthcoming), Shanghai Bbt Communication
France: (forthcoming), Bayard
PILAR’S DIARY IN EGYPT (2012)
On the third book, Pilar goes to Egypt with her friends and decides to help young
Tutancamon to have his throne back. They fight together and Tut teaches Pilar how
to write and read hieroglyphs. Here too, she learns about old Egyptian mythology.
Rights sold:
China: (forthcoming), Shanghai Bbt Communication
France: (forthcoming), Bayard
PILAR’S DIARY OF MACCHU PICCHU (April, 2014)
Rights sold:
France: (forthcoming), Bayard
Flavio Carneiro
THE STOLEN BOOK
The Championship
André, 32 years old, is unemployed, and the only thing he can do is read detective
novels. By accident, he’s mistaken for a real private investigator, and decides to
carry on with the charade when he learns that he can get some money from it.
With his inseparable friend and assistant Gordo by his side, André begins to
investigate the theft of a rare book: a first edition of Histoires Extraordinaires,
Baudelaire’s translation of Poe’s short stories, stolen from a bibliophile’s house.
“The Stolen Book” brings back the same duo from “The Championship”, Flávio
Carneiro’s first detective novel, with great acceptance from readers and critics
in Brazil. As in the previous novel, Rio de Janeiro is, more than the background,
almost a character in the story. Walking the streets and bars of the town, these
two amateur detectives draw a passionate portrait of Rio, either showing an
unusual perspective on its landmarks or revealing almost unknown spots.
Through André’s fluid and humorous language, the reader will closely follow
a rapid paced adventure, a surprising story in which reality and fiction blend
together and nothing is really what it seems to be.
André, a young man, has an uncontrollable compulsion for reading crime fiction.
Inspired by characters like Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, he decides to
take detective lessons by mail, which will put him in a weird investigation named
“The Championship”. Going through the streets and bars of Rio de Janeiro,
André is Flavio Carneiro’s tribute to the city, to mystery novels and to its most
accomplished authors, in particular Rubem Fonseca. The main character, after
all, is the crime novel itself, the object of passion for heroes and thugs.
O LIVRO ROUBADO
O Campeonato
“A classic crime novel, with thrills, hints and traps”
O Globo
The Confession
A Confissão
A kidnapper explains to his victim, during a long night, his reasons for capturing
her. Tied to an armchair, she hears a story of love, fear, and surprises. From
the weird occupation of the protagonist — a thief specialized in stealing books
— to the discoveries he makes about his own identity, everything is revealed in
the kidnapper’s long monologue in “The Confession”. Written in the first person
and with no dialogues, the book is the mazy and choppy account of the many
stories the narrator has to tell. The reader follows step by step the adventures of
this seductive stranger that seems to want, at the same time, to attract and to
frighten the woman he has before him.
“A seductive fiction”.
Correio Braziliense
“It’s a novel magnificently built by Flavio Carneiro. Divided in two blocks,
past and present, that dialogue with each other with an extraordinary
intensity, the author contrasts the absence and the presence, the
existential disquiet and a perennial feeling of loneliness, pain, and
pleasure, life and death.”
FLAVIO CARNEIRO (Goiânia, 1962) is a prize-winning author of novels,
short stories, essays, texts for children and teenagers, and screenplays.
He holds a Doctorate in Literature and is a Professor at Universidade
Estadual do Rio de Janeiro. Some of his books were published in
Portugal, Mexico, and Colombia. [www.flaviocarneiro.com.br]
O Globo
“A novel that establishes him as one of the most important contemporary
Brazilian authors.”
Jornal Rascunho
Award:
Finalist of the Jabuti Prize
Fugu
Two Mouths: Nightstand and Kitchen
Chronicles
Duas Bocas: Histórias de Comida e Sexo
Two lovers explore their senses in culinary and sexual experiments.
From the mixing of slow food with slow sex and comfort food with comfort sex
Fugu’s chronicles for bed and table are born.
“With regard to the femininity of fruit, some fruits remind us of the enchantments of the
lover’s body. Among them, the most precise is the lychee.Upon first sight, a lychee is a
pretty fruit, less red than the strawberry and less morbid than the plum.The skin is rough
and hard, and can be pulled to pieces like a tangerine. But when undressed, its flesh is
nothing like the citrus. It has no lady-like gemma. On the contrary, a light and large bud surrounded
by a very thin skin is suggestive of a glans; it is impossible not to take into the mouth
immediately.The same texture, the same softness, the same invite.Try pressing a lychee
between your lips, let it slide across like lipstick; kiss, lick, stick it a little inside the mouth,
and return it to the lips. A glans, isn’t it?”
Two Mouths
It’s tradition for those who speak of the pleasures of the body
to use pseudonyms. Be they Apicius, Anonymous Gourmet,
Juarez Becoza, Alain Gouste, Pauline Réage, Catherine
M., Crébillon Fils, or the Marquis de Sade. Some say they
hide behind the pseudonym. Nonsense. The pseudonym
undresses the writer of his proper name. Nude, without
history, without zodiac sign, or identity papers, the writer
experiences a freedom that only imaginary beings posses.
Fugu honors this tradition.
João Anzanello Carrascoza
AT 7 AND AT 40
FAST
AOS 7 E AOS 40
“At 7 and at 40”, by João Anzanello Carrascoza, a novel in fragments,
brings episodes led by the same character in two seminal periods of human
existence — seven years old (childhood), and forty years old (maturity).
The two narratives alternate: first, they show the boy in Brazil’s countryside
during the 1970’s, when the country was dominated by the rural culture and
was under a military regime, and afterwards when he is already an adult in
contemporary Brazil, as a citizen of the great national metropolis impacted by
the spectacle of daily life. In the first run, the character lived the time of the
dream. In the second one, the time of reason. The book reveals the creation
and the current phase of a post-modern individual, torn apart, searching for
his completeness, presenting a hybrid format in which the stories can be read
in pairs or without an established order. But whichever way the book is read,
the result is a fictional mosaic of high lyric charge.
“At 7 and at 40” is the story of a life, told in two periods, childhood
and middle-age, so to emphasize the irrecoverable distance, opened
by the passing of each day, between what we have been and what
we have become. Characteristic of the beautiful books of short
stories written by the author, this elegiac time, in which emerging
and submerging (life and death) mix up all the time, acquires a new
strength through the ingenious narrative structure of his first novel.”
Miguel Conde
“Carrascoza’s prose is poetic, with just the right amount of lyricism.”
Estado de Minas
João Anzanello Carrascoza (São Paulo, 1962) has published more than
30 books, including short stories and novels for children and teenagers, several
of them award winners. He has taken part in international programs for resident
writers, such as Ledig House (USA) and Château Lavigny (Switzerland), and has
had some of his works translated into English, French, Italian, Swedish, and
Spanish. João also worked as a copywriter for two decades in big advertising
agencies in the country.
I was rushing through life. We are all like that when we are seven. From a candy to a
toy. From a toy to sadness. Everything happens fast in the lengthy childhood. Dad came
home, Look what I got you!, opened his hand: a handful of Chita caramels! The world, then, was that
flavour in my mouth when I was chewing, wanting more, and more and more, happy to be there, loyal
to the moment. But then mom reminded me, Have you done your homework yet? Show me! In one
leap, I showed her the tiny handwriting in my notebook, Here, I copied everything here, look!, and
no longer cared about Chita, all I wanted was to know if my homework was correct, I asked mom to
check it out, while I removed with my finger the candy stuck in my teeth.
My brother called me, Let’s watch cartoons!, and turned on the TV, we both sitting on the carpet, like
little indians, I had already forgotten what I could not see, always trying to remain there, one eye on
Pink Panther and the other around the room hunting for new things. A cargo truck passed by – we
knew it because of the sound – we rushed out, jostling one another, and, leaning on the window-sill,
saw the noisy truck on the road. Silence returned very slowly, until it was there, whole. Ahead of us
were the same little houses as always, me and my brother there looking and the night coming from
the sky.
SLOWLY
The man parked his car on the underground,
grabbed his bag and a bouquet of roses he bought from a street vendor
and went up to the eighth floor.
The workday was behind him, numbed by temporary oblivion.
And when he left the lift, his wife was at the apartment door, hand on her hips, as if she had been
born right there just to wait for him.
She certainly saw him through the window, when moment he drove into the garage of the building.
He gave her the flowers and, happy with the smile she gave him,
Flowers? For me?
he hugged her, convinced that, after a turbulent day of work,
now he would have his share of paradise.
They entered the apartment in silence, his hand on her shoulder said,
This is my wife and I came back to her,
João Anzanello Carrascoza
Thorns and Pins
The Volume of Silence
“Thorns and Pins”, Carrascoza’s fifth book of short stories, talks about different
ways of experiencing farewell, about the difficult themes of loss and parting.
Here, he also creates a special proximity with the realm of childhood — it is
present in the grownup’s memory, in the experience of fatherhood, or in the
reconnaissance of its rites of passage. Carrascoza’s narrators tell their stories
from the point of view of children, as if childhood were the only real possibility of
wonder and fantasy. Mostly, the narratives revolve around the loss of innocence:
young people that toughen their skin to face life and learn what childlike aspects
exist in all kinds of happiness.
“The Volume of Silence” carries the best of João Anzanello Carrascoza’s shortstories production. Selected by Nelson de Oliveira, the stories of this book
disclose the trajectory of a unique author within the contemporary literary scene.
Carrascoza’s stories reveal patience and depuration. The result comes out in
the shape of delicate embroidery, characterized by the power of agglutination
of minute daily actions. The tension found in his prose magnetizes the iron-dust
of the prosaic. In Nelson de Oliveira’s words: “In Carrascoza’s literature, small
epiphanies of daily life challenge the fissure between subject and object, I and
the other. They happen between lonely people who, separated by silence and
routine, suddenly meet”. In the words of Alfredo Bosi, one of the most important
literary critics in Brazil: “The inner side of daily life is made of images that emerge
from outside. Alone they may seem simply prosaic, but the novelty of these
epiphanies makes us feel and feel once again the world’s figures as seen for the
very first time”. With this work Carrascoza in 2007 was the recipient of the Jabuti
Prize, the most traditional Brazilian literary prize.
Espinhos e Alfinetes
“Thorns and Pins confirms the place of this writer from São Paulo among
the best contemporary Brazilian short stories authors.”
Miguel Conde, O Globo “Written in a clear and colorful way, it will certainly delight every kind of
reader, whether he or she be interested or bored by advertising.
O Volume do Silêncio
Rights Sold:
Uruguay: Yaugurú
Rights Sold:
Spain: 2011, Baile del Sol
Washington Olivetto, introduction to the book
Minimal Loves
All that Water
Love in all aspects, between parents and children, siblings, lovers, friends, is
the subject of this short stories book. In “Minimal Loves”, Carrascoza tries to
bring his prose closer to poetry, thus dissecting the feeling that emerges in any
stage of existence. There is the tenderness, compassion and certainty that the
small things, almost forgettable in everyday life, are the ones that constitute the
greatness of life. Finalist of the Portugal Telecom prize.
The eleven stories of “All that Water” gather accounts of first experiences or lifealtering moments — the first love, the first disappointment with a friend, seeing
the ocean, moving away from home. Taking place almost always within the family,
they involve the delicate — and sometimes troubled — coexistence between
fathers, mothers, children, uncles and aunts, their findings, weaknesses,
sorrows, and surprises.
Amores Mínimos
Aquela água toda
Rights Sold:
Switzerland:
(forthcoming) Joie de Lire
Awards:
Highly Recommend for
Young Adults, by the
National Foundation of
Children and YA Book
Leticia Wierzchowski
SALT
SAL
Coming from Andaluzia,the Godoys have been living, for many generations, in La
Duiva, a little island in South America, where they work as lighthouse keepers
and run a sea rescue company.
One of the Godoys, Ivan, marries Cecília. They have six children, Lucas, Julieta,
Orfeu, Eva, Flora e Tiberius. The young Flora, who has always been a bookworm,
writes her first novel. However, some events from this still unpublished book
begin to happen in real life, and bring to the island the English teacher Julius
Templeman. Julius’unexpected arrival transforms the Godoy’s lives in La
Duiva: both Flora and her brother Orfeu fall in love with the newcomer, and this
astonishing love triangle is going to reshape deeply the whole family’s destiny.
With rare imagination and fantasy, the author makes time stop.
Martha Medeiros
Leticia Wierzchowski (Porto Alegre, 1972) is a talented contemporary
Brazilian author, with more than 20 books published in Brazil and several
other countries, including Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy,
and Serbia-Montenegro. Her fifth novel, The House of Seven Women, was
adapted by TV Globo to become a TV miniseries, and was aired in more
than 40 countries. [www.leticiawierzchowski.com.br]
“The lighthouse had gone crazy since Ivan died. Before it used to send out its beam
every two seconds, that was its identity. A briefest and most precise of flashes every
two seconds and then the sailors knew exactly at what point along the coast they were,
ships manoeuvred away from the treacherous rocks on the coast near Oedivetnom and
continued the journey towards their final destinations.
But that was before. Cecília thought the lighthouse missed Ivan; it felt his absenceas if it were a
person, felt it with the same acuteness as she did when night fell and she traipsed around the house,
pacing throughold and empty rooms, without a single echo from the past getting through time’s
barrier, or travelling across space to keep her company.
The lighthouse had become sad, almost demented with longing. It sunk ships on a whim, and lost its
mind on stormy nights, just as Cecília almost lost her mind in bed, listening to the wind moaning and
to the waves complaining constantly on the beach as if they were her own children crying when they
were young (and that was so long ago).
The lighthouse’s pain was also Cecília’s pain. She experienced Ivan’s absence as if she were missing
an arm or the right word to finish a sentence, she dropped things suddenly or became silent in mid
phrase. So it was not farfetched to say that Cecília understood the lighthouse. That she accepted
that the lighthouse, despite being a thing, had its own peculiarities and even a temper, and alongside
it a longing –a longing for Ivan.Because that old and robust lighthouse had been like a son to Ivan.
The lighthouse was a sort of anchor for the Godoy family: they had travelled across the world on a
ship –they had travelled across the world many times in many ships—, but they settled there on that
small and rocky beach, on one of the continent’s curves, and there they procreated and
toiled for decades, having built a house with the same name as the island, La Duiva, long
before Ivan landed in this life. When he arrived, when he opened his eyes to the world,
virginal eyes and soul not yet possessing any understanding or judgement, the first thing
he had seen –or so Ivan used to say—was the majestic lighthouse.”
Leticia Wierzchowski
The House of Seven Women
The Aparados
In “The House of Seven Women”, Leticia retells the Farroupilha Revolution (18351845) history, from a woman’s point of view. The book describes the adventures
of seven women from the family of General Bento Gonçalves, commander of the
revolution that intended to separate the South from the rest of the country. Bento
Gonçalves had isolated the women in a farm in an area away from the conflict
in order to protect them. But the war didn’t seem to come to an end, and the
women, confined in the loneliness of the pampas, decided to put some action
in their lives.
To protect his teenage granddaughter, who is seven months pregnant, Marcus
decides to take her to the self-sustaining farm he built. There, the frail relationship
between grandfather and granddaughter will be put to the test and both will have
to learn to compromise in order to survive in a world on the verge of chaos.
The story, revolving around the family environment, has as a backdrop an
apocalyptic world, full of looting, landslides, and corpses floating under unceasing
rain; a world that suffers the consequences of global warming.
Os Aparados
A Casa das Sete Mulheres
“Only an instinctive and visceral literary talent could conduct this
intimate and claustrophobic narrative with the epic blow that sweeps
the pages of the book.”
Tabajara Ruas
“The House of Seven Women is one of those historical novels in which
the fascination of history is complemented by the also irresistible art of
a novel well written.”
Luis Fernando Verissimo
“Leticia is part of a new generation of Brazilian writers that convey their
message with competence, courage, and emotion.”
Moacyr Scliar
Rights Sold:
Germany: 2009, Random
Bertelsmann / Blanvalet
Spain: 2004, Ediciones B
Spain: 2005, Byblos
(pocket edition)
France: JC Lattès
Greece: 2005, Enalios
Publications
Italy: 2004, R.C.S Libri
Serbia and Montengro:
(forthcoming), IKP EvroGiunti
“Leticia is one surprise after the other. Readers should prepare
themselves to be taken aback again. “The Aparados” is a dense and
well-constructed novel, a story about loss and reconciliation.”
Luis Fernando Veríssimo
Leticia Wierzchowski
A Bridge to Terebin
Uma Ponte Para Terebin
In “A Bridge to Terebin”, Leticia turns into a novel the journey of Jan, her polish
grandfather and one of the first Wierzchowskis to set foot in Brazil. Jan arrived
at Rio Grande do Sul in 1936, three years before his country was invaded by
Germany.
“(1938, un mes después que Alemania exigió que Polonia entregara el puerto de
Gdansk.) Jan entra en casa y se arroja en la butaca cerca de la ventana. Afuera, el cielo
que pasó todo el día escaldándose en un azul inenarrable, ardente y casi cruel, recién
ahora empeza a ganar una nueva luz, una finísima piel rojiza. El calor disminuyó y una
brisa discreta hace bailar las ramas de los jacarandás. Anna trabaja en la cocina. Ni siquiera notó
que él volvió a casa. Son las siete de la noche, y Jan hoy no piensa en irse al Club Polaco. Siente
un nudo en las tripas y en el alma. Si fuera una mujer diría: una corazonada. Pero no, él es un
hombre y trabajó todo el día, lijando y sacando medidas y cortando madera. Trabajó con albedrío,
en silencio, escuchando las charlas de uno y de otro. Comprende muy poco. Pero es necesario
poco para percibir cuando ellos empiezan. Los bolcheviques. Arreglando sus citas clandestinas. Una
seña, un meneo, un ademán. Sí, ya lo llamaron. Ya escucharon su no. Por casualidad no se acuerda
el 1920? Su padre le narró la historia más de mil veces. Y el aún lo tiene muy claro en la memoria.
Dos días enteros en una rama del árbol, y era invierno. Las llamaradas erguiéndose
hasta el cielo, llegando de los dos lados de la aldea. Rojas. Ardientes. Y gritos también,
después solamente el humo negro. Su madre, Hela y él, ocultos en el bosque, y hacía
mucho frío en las ramas más altas de aquel árbol...”
A Bridge to Terebin
Neptuno
Neptuno
“Neptuno” is a modern tale about blind passion, jealousy and betrayal. Two
young people engage in a distressed relationship that ends in tragedy. Deeply
moving, this novel is at the same time a love letter, a captivating saga of a family,
and Leticia’s validation as one of the most important writers of her generation.
Livia Garcia-Roza
OLD BOYS
My Husband
VELHOS MENINOS
Meu Marido
Vivian is a recent widow. After decades married to Conrado, she finds herself with
the difficult mission of taking her husband’s ashes to his home town, Salvador.
Hilda, a close friend of hers, will accompany her on this task. But when she arrives
at Bahia’s capital, everything begins to change. The decision of where to scatter
the ashes proves to be more complex than she had imagined, Hilda behaves in a
very bizarre way and, as if by irony of fate, Vivian will meet Laurinho, her love from
childhood, again. The possibility of falling in love and having a romance when
she’s almost 70 years old will bring a new light to the protagonist’s life who, up
until now, had resigned to an unhappy marriage, the dedication to her only son,
and her refuge in writing. Livia Garcia-Roza presents another sensitive novel,
humorous and full of hope.
OLD BOYS
maY/14
In “My Husband”, Livia tells, in the first person, the gradual ruin of a family. Bela is
an English teacher resigned with her marriage with Deputy Eduardo Durand. She
is happy with her son Raphael and with the nanny and jack-of-all-trades Dulce,
and all live with a dog in a vast four-bedroom apartment in a quiet neighborhood
in Rio de Janeiro. Neurotic, alcoholic, selfish, and vicious-humoured, Eduardo is
like a hurricane that blows everything away with its passage. Our narrator offers
her memories, picturing scenes that resemble old canvas yellowed and blurred
by the time, so as to provide the readers with a chance to build their own view
of the family.
Matilde’s Dream
A Thousand Loves
To their father’s pride, Matilde and Cristina are members of the Moreira family.
The lineage, to him, is synonymous with respect, dignity, and many other virtues.
The two sisters, born in the countryside, share the same dream — to visit Rio de
Janeiro. However, fate has other plans, and the desire to visit the Marvelous City
will be fulfilled, but not exactly for the reasons they’ve planned.
Maria is almost 60 years old and, since the death of her husband, lives
with her daughter, who treats her like an old lady incapable of taking care
of herself. Hoping to regain joy in her life and determined to create new
memories, she nurtures a platonic passion for a man she barely knows.
O Sonho de Matilde
Milamor
Awards:
Finalist of the São Paulo
Literature Award
Livia Garcia-Roza is a psychoanalyst and writer of novels, short stories,
and books for children and young people. With more than 15 books
published, Livia’s prose always immerses itself in human emotions, with
extreme tenderness and depth.
“What I love the most about fiction is to be able to look in another
direction, to have an alternative, a respite, a break in the routine”, says
Livia Garcia-Roza.
Luis Fernando Verissimo
BEETHOVEN’S LAST QUARTETS AND OTHER
STORIES
OS ULTIMOS QUARTETOS DE BEETHOVEN E OUTROS
CONTOS
A mysterious and sexy Spanish woman, a former political prisoner tormented by
a stain on the carpet, an expert in wine that doesn’t drink, a man who needs to
decide how far to go to earn a promotion, a cellist who has a strange hold on five
friends. Not to mention the housekeeper that solves all — I said all — problems in
the house. Who else but Cremilda would be able to get rid of the loan shark that
badgers the family and, on top of that, make a blancmange exactly like the one
her boss’s mother makes?
This irresistible array of characters is in the ten texts compiled in this book. Luis
Fernando Verissimo goes from drama to comedy, with incursions on tragicomedy
here and there. Like in the case of the man who, during a heart attack, tries to
remember where he has put his medication and what comes to mind are the
streets of Copacabana, Laurel and Hardy, the captaincies, the central line of the
three times soccer champion Flamengo in the 1940s, and Gisela. Oh, Gisela!
Luis Fernando Verissimo (Porto Alegre, 1936) has a vast literary
work that includes books for children and young people, comics,
essays, and novels, published in Brazil and worldwide. Some of his
books were adapted to the movies, TV, and the theatre. He writes
weekly for several newspapers, such as O Globo, O Estado de São
Paulo, and Zero Hora.
Impossible Dialogues
Diálogos Impossíveis
Like an existentialist endowed with a sense of humor, Veríssimo pursues, in his
essays, the absurdity that marks human existence — with some exceptions, the
only one that worries about its purpose, its demise, and if anyone is talking too
much during a poker game. This curse never becomes more evident than at the
time they open their mouths. So what was meant to be communication turns into
a big hodgepodge.
It could be in the imaginary dialogue where Don Juan tries to seduce Death itself,
or in the trivial conversation between a couple that argues at bedtime. Whatever.
Men — and let’s be egalitarian, women — seem to say what shouldn’t be said
and be quiet about what is fundamental. Luckily for the reader, Veríssimo is
always around, recording the hilarious moments when the human race exerts
its vocation to mess up.
Luis Fernando Verissimo
The Club of Angels
Borges and the Eternal Orangutans
A group of friends gathers monthly to celebrate the pleasures and dangers of
gluttony. To them, the threat of death is an inspiration to live. The plot is macabre,
spiced with humor, full of seductive characters. In 2003, The Club of Angels was
among the 25 best books of the year by the New York Public Library.
Vogelstein is a loner who has always lived among books. Suddenly, fate shakes up
his simple life and takes him to Buenos Aires, for a congress about Edgar Allan Poe,
the forerunner of the modern detective story. There, he will meet his idol, Jorge Luis
Borges and, through circumstances that the passion for literature alone couldn’t
explain, he will find himself in the middle of a crime that involves arcane demons,
mysteries of the Kabbalah, and the risk of the destruction of the world of men.
O Clube dos Anjos
Rights sold:
Germany: 2001, Lichtenberg Verlag/Droemer
Korea: 2007, Woogjin Think Big Co.
Spain: 2001, Plaza y Janés
Greece: 2001, Enalios
Netherlands: 2011, Athenaeum / Querido
England: 2001, Harvill
Italy: 2000, Ponte Alle Grazie
Yugoslavia: 2002, Narodna Knjiga
Portugal: 2001, Dom Quixote
Romenia: 2005, Curtea Vechea Publishing
Russia: 2005, Ast Publishers
USA: 2002, New Directions
USA: 2002, New Directions (pocket edition)
The spies
Os Espiões
Still healing from the hangover from the weekend on a Tuesday morning, the
employee of a small publisher receives a white envelope with the first few pages
of a confessional book written by some Ariadne, who promises to tell her story
with a secret lover, and then commit suicide. Luis Fernando Verissimo creates, in
this novel, a hybrid allegory of mythology, humor, and mystery. On each line, like a
thread sewing comedy to day-to-day drama, the author weaves the web from which
his characters may, perhaps, not escape — an allegorical universe, diabolically
funny and polished, that captures the reader till the end of this enigma.
Rights Sold:
France: (no prelo), Folies d’Encre
Netherlands: 2012, Athenaeum
Portugal: 2009, Dom Quixote
Romenia: 2012, Vivaldi
Serbia and Montengro: (forthcoming), Paideia
UK: 2012, MacLehose Press
Borges e os Orangotangos Eternos
Rights sold:
Argentina: 2005, Editorial Sudamericana
Korea: 2007 , Woongiin Think Big Co.
Denmark: 2003, Glyldend Al
Spain: 2008, Ézaro
France: 2004, Éditions Du Seuil
Greece: 2007, Agra Publiactions
England: 2004, Harvill
Israel: (forthcoming), Bambook Publishers
Italy: (forthcoming), Atmosphere Libri
Japan: 2008, Fusosha
Romenia: 2005, Curtea Veche
Russia: (forthcoming), AST Publishers
Serbia and Montengro: (forthcoming), Trivic
Turkey: (forthcoming), Monokl Yayinlari
USA: 2005, New Directions
The Best of the Comedies of Private
Life
O Melhor das Comédias da Vida Privada
With liveliness, Verissimo decodes our private comedies. From political criticism,
traveling through situation comedy to the x-ray of loving relationships, this volume
brings together funny, delicate, and confessional stories that reveal our tragedies,
both big and small, of everyday life.
LUIZ ALBERTO HANNS
THE MARRIAGE EQUATION
A EQUAÇÃO DO CASMENTO
We haven’t yet realized how complex the current project for happiness in a
marriage is. We were not prepared for it. The increasing number of divorces,
the increment of complaints, the matrimonial dissatisfaction and the difficulties
that single people have to find a partner testify to the daunting task of adjusting
expectations.
This book, in line with the very latest in international literature on marriage, brings
innovative tools and a new perspective on contemporary relationships. In the form
of a self-help book, “The Marriage Equation – what can or cannot be changed
in your relationship” is divided in three parts of great practical value for the lay
person. The first one presents six factors that researches show to be essential
for matrimonial satisfaction. Stories of several couples are used to illustrate the
six factors and, at the end of part 1, the readers are able to create the equation
of their marriage and visualize the areas of strength and vulnerabilities, and to
understand where they may want or need to act on their relationship. In part 2,
the book provides tools to better the interaction of the couple, many of them
unheard of in international literature, and individual exercises for each spouse.
Part 3 contains six marriage projects that the reader may want or need to try, and
guides on how to do it: rescue the marriage from a severe crisis; try to live with
a difficult spouse they don’t want to give up on; better a harmonic marriage that
has lost its spark; fuel the sex life in an erotically impoverished relationship; deal
with an extramarital affair; and try to build a consensual separation. Written for
lay people, the book is also very valuable for therapists.
Luiz Hanns, PhD in Psichology by the most renowned Brazilian universities
(USP and PUC – SP), has been working with couples for more than 20
years, and gives lectures in companies and schools, He is also present in
the press, radio, and TV. In November he will begin to write in two different
venues: a very sought after website for women (Delas – IG), and the
masculine magazine GQ (Vogue-Condé Nast group).
Luiz Eduardo Soares
Elite Squad
Elite Squad 2
“Elite Squad” reveals violence from an absolutely original point of view — the eyes
of the Police. For the first time, we will follow the routine of the police officers,
listen to their own voice, follow their footsteps, their daily drama — men who
receive disproportional salaries in regards to the threats they face every day. And
that have to practice brutality, because they don’t feel ruled by the laws of the
Constitution, but by the imperative of war instead.
“Elite Squad 2” is a work of fiction based on current facts about the organized
crime in Rio de Janeiro. Written by Luiz Eduardo Soares, along with three coauthors that lived closely with the violence in the city, Claudio Ferraz, André
Batista, and Rodrigo Pimentel, it is the sequel of “Elite Squad”, which was very
successful in presenting to readers, from the Police’s point of view, the details
of our wild urban guerrillas. Now, “Elite Squad 2” shows, through a fluid and
revealing narrative, the “behind the scenes” of the real Brazilian mob: the militias.
Elite da Tropa
Elite da Tropa 2
The book is a fictional work based on the real experiences of the authors. Places,
facts, and characters have been modified, recombined and have had their names
changed. Signed by anthropologist and expert on public safety, Luiz Eduardo
Soares, the Military Police Major André Batista, and former BOPE Commander,
Rodrigo Pimentel, “Elite Squad” reveals explosive undergrounds of a divided city.
“‘Elite Squad’ shows, bluntly and without concessions, the innards of
life as a police officer. The rawness of the book is its greatest asset.”
Época
Rights Sold:
Argentina: 2009, Marea
Editorial
Spain: 2010, Lince
US: 2008, Weinstein
Italy: 2008, Bompiani
Poland: 2009,
Wydawnictwo Ksiazkowe
Twój Styl
Portugal: 2008,
Presença
“‘Elite Squad’ is a punch in the stomach of the middle-class, of those
sitting in front of the TV, clamouring for justice against the gang of
godforsaken people that disturb the peace and quiet of their Sunday.”
Zero Hora
Luiz Eduardo Soares is an anthropologist, political scientist, holds
a Post-Doctorate in Political Philosophy, and is a leading authority on
security policies in Brazil. He was National Secretary of Public Safety
and Security, Justice and Citizenship Coordinator of the state of Rio de
Janeiro, among other positions. Professor at the Universidade Estadual
do Rio de Janeiro, and at the Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing,
he is also a prizewinning author with several books published, including
essays and novels, dealing with themes such as violence, corruption,
and drug dealing. Rights to his books were sold to several countries.
[www.luizeduardosoares.com]
Rights Sold:
Portugal: 2011,
Presença
France: 2011, Anacaona
Luiz Eduardo Soares
All or Nothing
Tudo ou Nada
All of Nothing tells the story of a yachtsman and former stock market’s trader that
knew international drug dealing from the inside. Among glamorous sailboats,
professional killers, and experts in disguises, the book reveals, by reporting real
facts, lived by real people, the behind-the-scenes of the international dealing of
cocaine — from negotiations in the middle of the Colombian jungle to the arrival
in Europe. It’s a book that surprises by joining two completely different points of
view: one, from a man that knew the core of international drug dealing, and the
other from one of the greatest experts in public safety in the country.
“My wish is that the book will make people think, and that it will inform about how
this ghostly machine, the drug dealing, about which everybody talks and very few
people know from the inside, works”, declares Luiz Eduardo Soares.
“Reclining in his seat in the small airplane, Albino contemplates the landscape. The plane
flies amid the magnificent Andes of the Colombian interior, well below the highest peaks.
After leaving Rio, where he met Lukas and recruited DaCosta, he passed through São
Paulo, went from there to Mexico City, then Caracas, visited some islands in the Caribbean, and
continued on to Bogotá, where he caught the flight to Pasto. This is how it works.
The captain asks the handful of passengers to fasten their seatbelts and prepare for landing. The
plane accelerates and ascends, dizzyingly, reaching the altitude of a loop of black rock which juts out
over the abyss: this is the airport that serves the city of Pasto. The plane oscillates, establishes the
direction of the wind, circles the runway, selects the most suitable direction, swings back to find the
appropriate incline and dives for what would seem to be an improbable landing.
Albino is met on the runway and driven into the mountains in the back seat of a Japanese van,
winding along at high speed, cruising with an abundant entourage of vehicles that could figure
perfectly in a film from the 70s. The fleet crawls miraculously across the narrow wooden bridges.
Pasto has the aspect of a Mayan sanctuary, in the shadow of the Galeras Volcano, supposed to be
extinct, until it cremated a scientific expedition a few decades back.
In the modern international hotel, Albino is received by a functionary of his hosts as he glides through
the lobby with the same familiarity that he shows in greeting the men who await him in a private
room. This encounter will result in an initial agreement on the basis of which, eventually, in some
remote location in the Colombian interior, a meeting with the commander of the Cali cartel will take
place.
Albino will be conducted down from the mountains to the airport, where a plane waits to bring him to
an airfield in the middle of the rainforest.
Two days later, he will participate in the summit negotiations.
The summit meeting is brief and leaves a balance of few words, one ton of pure cocaine, and twenty
two million pounds. It will be Albino’s task, as always, to ensure the cargo reaches its destination,
to stock it, distribute it among the european wholesalers—who will resell it to the retailers—to
receive payment and to compensate the Colombian suppliers, who control the production and are
responsible for the first stage of the transport, which is aerial and brings the product from the jungle
to the ocean, where it is collected by the vessels under Albino’s command. The final price of the blow
for the consumer on the streets of Europe and the United States corresponds to a much
higher value than that of the costs involved in the production, transportational logistics,
stocking and distribution, because the drug that arrives to the user has a greatly inferior
degree of purity.”
Lya Luft
Tiger in the Shade
TIME IS A FLOWING RIVER
In this novel, Lya is true to her universe of mystery, magic, and very human
drama, which, in one way or another, affect us all.
The flow of time, as a river that carries us — not destroying, but transforming —
makes life so important and nothing trivial, although we may forget it.
The difficult relationships between lovers and within families are the ground on
which her characters walk. The duel between life and death underlies all other
subjects. The enigmatic element remains on many characters, like the singular
Vovinha, whose origin is unknown, the Cyclops-baby, and the tormented father
who sleeps with a gun under his pillow. As interesting as the other characters
are Dália, the favorite daughter, who plunges into despair; the tiger that lurks in
the shadows of a nonexistent grove; or the people that have drowned near the
beach house called Casa do Mar, who, at night, come to shore and talk to the
main character, Dôda.
In the three big stages of life — childhood/youth, maturity, and old age — we are
creating our lives each day, creating who we are, creating maybe our end, when,
in this big, tireless river, the vessel that takes us will eventually moor at a dock, or
debouch in an ocean called enigma. That is not necessarily the end — regardless
of beliefs or philosophies.
O Tigre na Sombra O TEMPO É UM RIO QUE CORRE
Awards:
Machado de Assis Award,
from the Brazilian Academy
of Letters
Dôda was born with a leg shorter than the other, but, although physically
challenged, she owns all the mysteries: she trails paths that the others cannot
reach, like the world inside mirrors — which, according to her, has a life of its own
and watches us. She records everyone’s plots, speaks for everyone, and feels
and suffers for everyone. She also dialogues with her alter ego, or with her friend
inside the mirrors, Dolores, who is, in many ways, like she would like to be.
“Dolores, the protagonist of “The tiger in the shade” (Record), Lya Luft’s
new novel, is an exemplary character. Her life — and her misery — are
born from a mistake that characterizes the contemporary world: the
radical and hopeless detachment between reality and imagination.”
José Castello, Gazeta do Povo
Lya Luft is a novelist, columnist, essayist, poet, and short story writer.
One of the most prestigious contemporary Brazilian authors, she has
more than 20 published books, including novels, essays, and children’s
stories, some of them published in 15 foreign countries. Since 2004,
she writes a biweekly column for Veja magazine, and is also a translator,
from German and English, and has translated to Portuguese works from
Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann, among others.
Each one creates his own story, even without knowing it, running through
the woods of fatalities and mishaps, but able to, here and there, discover,
accomplish, build.
The passage of time, instead of terrorizing and pushing us to take foolish
measures to look embalmed in an idealized youth, must be the master that will
teach us the supreme importance of the smallest things.
And the meaning of time? Each one of us gives sense to their own story.
TIME IS A
FLOWING
RIVER
maRCH/14
Lya Luft
Losses & Gains
Multiple Choice
Part memoir, part essay, “Losses & Gains” speaks of love, pleasure and the pain
of loss either through poetry or through an almost direct dialogue with readers,
inviting them to discover life’s most essential beauties.
Lya convokes the reader to an essential ritual: thinking of life’s multiple choices.
With lucidity and clarity, she approaches the key-elements of our daily life:
oldness and youth, the new dilemmas and taboos of sexuality, family changes,
virtual communication, the borders between public and private, violence, drugs,
ethics, and affections. A beautiful essay that reflects the open paths in our times.
Perdas & Ganhos
Rights sold:
Germany: 2005, Ulstein
Denmark: (forthcoming), Bazar Forlag
Spain:2005, El Pais / Aguilar
Spain/Catalan: 2005, Grup 62 (rights reverted)
Finland: (forthcoming), Bazar Forlag
France: 2005, Editions Metailié
Netherlands: 2005, De Boekerij
Israel: 2006, Kinneret-Zmora
Italy: 2006, Rcs Libri / Bompiani
Yuguslavia: 2006, Laguna
Norway: (forthcoming), Bazar Forlag
Portugal: 2004, Editorial Presença
UK: 2007, Vermillion
SWeden: (forthcoming), Bazar Forlag
Vietnam: First News
Multipla Escolha
“In her hands, the World Theatre obtains an intimate and delicate
meaning — is within ourselves that the play, be it comical or tragic, is
developed.”
Veja
Lygia Fagundes Telles
The Girl in the Photograph
The Rats’ Conference
In a boarding school run by nuns in São Paulo, in 1973, three young college
“The Rats’ Conference” was published for the first time in 1977, and brings
fourteen stories in which the author ventures into the realm of the fantastic as
a privileged way to access reality. Alternating narrative times, moving with ease
from first to third person and deftly using free indirect language, Lygia Fagundes
Telles conciliates a highly complex literary construction with the unique ability to
communicate with the reader. It has received the PEN Clube do Brasil Award in
1977.
As Meninas
Seminário dos ratos
students begin their adult lives in very different ways. Narrating in the first and
the third person, assuming, at different times, the point of view of either one of
the protagonists, Lygia Fagundes Telles builds a pulsating and polyphonic novel,
about the spirit of those troubled times, filled with vertiginous transformations,
especially of behavioural nature. “The Girl in the Photograph” eventually became
one of the most celebrated books by the critics, and one of the most popular
among the author’s readers. It was considered a very courageous work when it
was released (1973), for describing a torture session at a time when the theme
was strictly forbidden.
“Such beauty, such strength, such live and excruciating theme in ‘The
Girl in the Photograph’”
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
“Lygia Fagundes Telles really has something of the atmospheric
tenderness of a Katherine Mansfield. The only difference is this: she
also knows how to write a novel, and ‘The Girl in the Photograph’ really
is a classy novel.”
Otto Maria Carpeaux
Rights sold:
France: 2005, Editions
Stock
Itália: 2006, Cavallo Di
Ferro
Portugal: 2006,
Presença
USA: 2012, Dalkey Archive
Press
Awards:
Coelho Neto Award, from
the Brazilian Academy of
Letters
Jabuti Prize
Best Novel, from the
São Paulo’s Art Critics
Association
Lygia Fagundes Telles, one of the greatest female writers of Brazilian
literature, author of more than 30 works, including novels, short stories,
and memoirs, many of which award winners, was elected to the Academia
Brasileira de Letras in 1982. In 2005, she has received, for the body of
her work, the Camões Award, the most important prize of the Portuguese
language. She was State Prosecutor, president of the Cinemateca Brasileira,
and vice-president of the União Brasileira de Escritores.
Awards:
PEN Clube do Brasil Award
Marcelo Ferroni
FROM THE WALLS, MY LOVE, THE SLAVES
ARE WATCHING
DAS PAREDES, MEU AMOR, OS ESCRAVOS NOS
CONTEMPLAM
Humberto Mariconda had everything he needed to feel like an accomplished
person: he was about to release his first book, The Punch in the Laughing
Mouth and Other Stories, and had met a rich and enigmatic girl, with whom he
thought he could be rich and happy. His book, however, is not as successful as
he’d expected. And the girl, Julia, is an elusive character who, by inviting him to
spend the weekend in her family’s historic country house, will submit him to
dramatic experiences: a crime, an interview with dead people, a duel. Locked
in this mansion haunted by bad memories, isolated from the world by a storm,
and oblivious to the passage of time, Mariconda will become the investigator of a
brutal crime that seems straight out of a novel.
FROM THE
WALLS, MY
LOVE, THE
SLAVES ARE
WATCHING
APRIL/14
A Practical Guide to Guerrilla
Warfare
Método Prático da Guerrilha
Everyone knows who Che Guevara was, but few know the details that led to his
ruin in 1966 and 1967.
Isolated in Tanzania, depressed by the guerrilla failure in Congo, he gathers his
most loyal subordinates to put together a new revolution, now in Bolivia. Tired
of the Cuban bureaucracy, he wants to do things his way, with no deals and no
concessions.
Trusted men of the leader seek for a propitious region to set up the guerrilla,
while an undercover female agent, infiltrated in the high spheres of La Paz, meets
with a Cuban emissary to construct the urban network. But the inexperience of
them all, added to the local difficulties, threaten the venture from the beginning.
The saga of the Argentine guerrilla is recounted by an unnamed biographer — the
unreliable narrator of this story. This is a novel about ambition and madness
that starts from actual facts, but subverts the documented history, recreates
characters and situations about the few people that stood by the soldier’s side
until his final moments.
Marcelo Ferroni (São Paulo, 1974) is a writer and a journalist who has
worked in prestigious Brazilian newspapers and magazines. Since 2006
he is the Publisher of Alfaguara, branch of Editora Objetiva, responsible
for foreign and national literature titles. His novel, A Practical Guide to
Guerrilla Warfare, released in 2010, had its rights sold to Portugal,
Germany, Italy, and Spain.
Rights sold:
Germany: 2012,
Suhrkamp
Spain: 2012, Alfaguara
Italy: (forthcoming),
Mondadori
Portugual: 2011, Dom
Quixote
Marcia Zoladz
BRAZILIAN DESSERTS AND SWEETS
SOBREMESAS E DOCES BRASILEIROS
The recipes choice for “Brazilian desserts and sweets” are based on the author’s
childhood memories, traditional regional patisserie from European immigrants
and the amazing variety of tropical fruits and her experience as chef and food
historian.
Number of recipes: 31, organized by occasion or tradition:
1. Cakes and pies have recipes from different regions of the country.
2. Colonial sweets are the recipes of Portuguese origin with a personal touch
like the Mango risotto translate below or the fabulous soft Quindins, a mix of
eggs, sugar and grated coconut.
3. Kids recipes shows all the traditional party sweets like the Brigadeiro –
chocolate truffle, and an everyday layer cake with banana marmalade.
4. Straight from farm is a small collection of the most appreciated sweets in
Brazil with its countryside flavors: creamed cheese with guava paste, sweet corn
and coconut milk custard and old fashioned banana marmalade.
5. Tropicals has sorbets made with Amazon fruit açaí, fresh mangoes and an
avocado cream, Brazil is the only country in world that eats and loves avocados
with sugar as a dessert.
Marcia Zoladz was born in Rio de Janeiro, is a journalist and food writer. She
lived in California,in the United States, and in Germany where she wrote her first
cookbook, Portugiesisch Kochen (editio diá, 1987), with Portuguese family recipes,
also published in Holland. She published a book with easy recipes for men, with
original recipes, Das Männer Kochbuch (Fischer Verlag:1997), published in Brasil
in a revised edition – Muito Prazer, receitas com o máximo de sabor e o mínimo de
esforço, Brigadeiros e bolinhas (Publifolha, 2011), with recipes and histories of bite
site food. She is one the pioneers of Internet in Brazil, where she worked in several
management positions and nowadays besides writing books, Marcia is the creative
director and owner of the site Marcia’s Kitchen, with about 100 thousand visitors a
month, www.cozinhadamarcia.com.br, a partner of UOL, the largest content provider
in Portuguese. An active participant of Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery at
the University of Oxford, in England, she collaborates in books and magazines in
Brazil, the United States, England and Angola. [www.cozinhadamarcia.com.br]
Recipe
Cheese mousse with guava sauce
Traditional fruit compotes and marmalades are served with a slice of fresh cheese to
contrast and highlight the flavor of the fruits. The mousse with the guava sauce is a new way to serve
a national dessert – guava paste with fresh cheese.
Ingredients
For the cheese mousse:
250 g of cottage cheese
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon rose water
For the guava syrup:
250 g guava paste (store bought)
120 ml water
1 tablespoon Brazilian cachaça (or Kirshwasser, do not use rum!)
Yield: 4 servings
First prepare the guava syrup: dissolve the guava paste in the water over low heat until thick and
creamy. Only add the cachaça when the sauce is warm, otherwise the alcohol will evaporate.
As the guava sauce cools, beat the cheese with a mixer until smooth and creamy. Add the lemon
juice and rose water, stirring constantly. Once all the ingredients are well mixed, put a little sauce at
the bottom of four medium sized or eight very small cups or bowls, cover with cheese mousse then
add just another teaspoon of the guava sauce and, with help of the tip of a knife blade
make spiral movements to show the red and white contrasting colors.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Marina Colasanti
SHORT STORY OF A TINY LOVE
My War of Theirs
The water that seeps into the office through a broken roof tile initiates an
encounter of love. The author, owner of that office, finds herself confronted by the
need of saving a life, the one of the baby pigeon abandoned in the nest beneath
the tiles. She will have to improvise as a mother, since she knows nothing about
the needs of those birds. And the pigeon will have to improvise as a son, since
he knows nothing about the one who protects and cares for him. Like in all loving
relationships, both of them progress slowly, paying attention to one another while
they seek to understand. They don’t speak the same language, and they are not
of the same species, but it doesn’t matter much, because affection knows other
ways to get to comprehension. And it is about affection when she tries to teach
him to fly, or when he, free, answers her call. Gently, the differences between
them are overcome at each new stage of development, at each new victory. Until
the completion of this cycle of goodwill that, being brief, becomes unforgettable.
“The bombs fall slowly. I don’t know how it is possible, with all that
weight. But slowly they fall, or I’ve seen them falling slowly, very slowly.
And above my head, coming towards me. It wasn’t me they were after, it
wasn’t that family lying on the grass the target of so much ammunition.”
BREVE HISTÓRIA DE UM PEQUENO AMOR
MINHA GUERRA ALHEIA
Rights sold:
Colombia: (forthcoming)
Santillana
A war scene starts this book and Marina Colasanti’s life. Before an outdoor altar
surrounded by soldiers and machine guns, her parents get wed. The groom, in
uniform, is about to leave for one more stage of the Italian colonial conquest in
Africa. It will be in Africa, in Asmara, capital of Eritrea, that the writer would be
born two years later.
This is not just a book of memoirs, it is a document. Marina, a journalist with a
fruitful career in newspapers and magazines, joins her memories with an intense
research work to trace, through her family’s saga, a portrait of an era and the
conflict that shook the world.
This exciting book that we read like a novel, reveals another side of this author
already established in fiction, essays, and poetry.
Marina Colasanti was born in the former Italian colony of Eritrea
in 1937. As a child, her family moved back to Italy, from where they’ve
emigrated to Brazil after the end of World War II. She is one of the
most awarded female Brazilian writers, author of about 40 books,
including works for children and young adults, short stories, novels,
and essays. Her views of places, as well as of women’s issues,
are constant themes in her work. She was a columnist and editor
of papers and magazines as Jornal do Brazil and Nova, and won
the Prêmio Abril de Jornalismo three times. She also won awards
as an advertising copywriter. Graduated in Fine Arts, it is she who
illustrates most of her books. Marina is also a renowned translator
from English, French, and Italian. [www.marinacolasanti.com]
Rights sold:
Colombia: (forthcoming)
Babel Libros
Ricardo Lísias
DIVORCE
DIVÓRCIO
August, 2011. After just four months of marriage, the narrator of “Divorce” runs
into his wife’s journal, in which she writes: Ricardo is pathetic, any child would be
ashamed of having such a father. I’ve married a man that hasn’t lived.
“After four days without any sleep, i thought i had died”, the narrator vents. From
then on, he describes his falling apart and his attempt to understand what has
led him to the critical point. Literature, and afterwards, sports practice, helps him
regain some clarity in his life.
But it’s not always possible to explain unemotionally what happened; to sort out
conflicting feelings, pain and obsession, the desire to forget. This is what makes
“Divorce” a novel without parallel. In an exciting flow, in a fictional reconstruction
of memory, the author goes beyond the limits of self-fiction and reaches a new
ground, in which literature — combative, defiant literature — has the final word.
“Heartbreaks, ruptures, and loves, all is in ‘Divorce’. The novel blends the frivolous tone of some
comments with the analysis of serious themes and, dialoging with its time, mixes public and private,
cinema and literature, pop and cult. In addition to these elements, the self-fictional strategy and
the permanent questioning about the role of the writer blur the lines between reality and fiction
suggested by the literary game.”
Stefania Chiarelli, Jornal “O Globo”
“In The suicide’s heaven, Ricardo Lísias had already shown that he could do the difficult shifting
from a traumatic biographic event to literature, in an impressive and erratic blend of violence and
humor. In ‘Divorce’, a new tragic event that happens to the character who bears the author’s name,
the discovery of a journal that puts an end to his wedding of only four months, receives a treatment
equally sophisticated.”
(Adriano Schwartz, Folha de S Paulo
KILOMETRE ONE
a body in raw flesh
Ricardo Lísias was born in São Paulo in 1975. He has published the novels
Cobertor de estrelas (Blanket of Stars, Rocco), translated into Spanish and
Galician, and Duas praças (Two Squares, Globo), shortlisted for the 2006
Portugal Telecom Prize for Brazilian Literature. He is also the author of the short
story collection Anna O e outras novelas (Anna O and other short novels, Globo),
a finalist for the 2008 Jabuti Prize. His novel O livro dos mandarins (The Book
of Mandarins, Alfaguara) was nominated for the São Paulo Literary Prize. Some
of his texts were published in Piauí and the Brazilian Granta magazines and
selected for Granta’s issue dedicated to The Best Young Brazilian Novelists.
After four sleepless days, I thought I’d died. My body was lying on the bed I bought when
I moved out. I saw myself from a couple of metres away and, apart from noticing the glazed eyes, I
could barely bring myself to check I was breathing. My chest was still. I waited a few seconds and
checked again.
We live our deaths wide awake.
I don’t know what happened in the next few moments. I have blind spots in my life between August
and December 2011. In those moments I must be dead.
I felt I had fallen on the floor. I don’t remember hitting the ground. It doesn’t matter. I stretched
my right arm and it hit the bed. It stung because my body had no skin. The coffin was still there.
Somehow, my jaw touched my right knee. The raw flesh throbbed and stung. As it was only a light
brush, the pain did not last long. Even so, my eyes rolled in their sockets. Some of those movements
are very clear to me. I remember them in slow motion.
Once again I stretched my right arm and it touched the coffin. The flayed corpse was still obeying me.
I tried to open my eyes to confirm whether I was still alive on the new bed. I couldn’t. My
stomach tightened. I felt out of breath. It is difficult to breathe amid such darkness. The
heart-rate shoots up. I was reminded of the day my ex-wife dallied with something while
I drowned. I found it hard to open my eyes. My hands pulsed. A faraway glare left me
disoriented. A body in raw flesh is hot.
Ricardo Lísias
The Suicide’s Heaven
The Book of Mandarins
The narrator of “The Suicide’s Heaven”, a man in his early thirties, is one
of the Brazilian specialists on the subject of collections. His best friend’s
suicide provokes a crisis, makes him question his choices, and causes him
“to start missing everything”.
Paulo, a successful and competitive banker, is a man with a single obsession: to
be chosen, among all the employees at his bank, for a vacancy in China. He goes
way beyond his fellow candidates to prepare for the post. He studies Mandarin,
does research into Chinese history and culture, and becomes a specialist.
A descendant of Lebanese migrants, the narrator ends up travelling to the
Middle East while as he researches his grand-uncle’s possible involvement
in a terrorist group. World events, and Brazil’s recent history, become
the backdrop to his breakdown, as he queries such complex subjects as
madness and suicide.
He wouldn’t have done it any other way: Paulo is a true professional. He believes
in perseverance, organisation and leadership. He knows that a successful
executive –as he is— cannot afford to waste time. That, in fact, is one of the
lessons he plans to include in a future business manual.
O Céu dos Suicidas
Gradually, readers will discover that the narrator’s greatest concern is with
what awaits his friend after committing suicide. According to almost all world
religions, he has no right to Paradise, or will suffer an even greater anguish
than the one that drove him to kill himself.
O Livro dos Mandarins
Awards:
Best Novel, from the
São Paulo’s Art Critics
Association (2012)
There is one small detail he has not counted on: the plans that lie in store for
him are very different to those he had imagined. “The Book of Mandarins” is a
surprising novel, steeped in good humour and filled with disconcerting moments,
from one of the most original writers in his generation. Shortlisted for the São
Paulo Literature Prize.
“His high risk endeavour and his authorial courage make Ricardo Lísias,
unmistakably, one of the great names of new Brazilian literature.”
Wilson Bueno, Estado de S. Paulo
“I consider Ricardo Lísias to be one of the best Brazilian writers to have
emerged in the past few years.”
Leyla Perrone-Moisés
Rights sold:
Italy: (forthcoming),
Barbès Editore
Argentina: Adriana
Hidalgo
Sérgio Rodrigues
THE FEINT
O DRIBLE
This third novel by Sérgio Rodrigues is centered on the character of an eightyyear-old sports columnist who tries to build bridges with his son, whom he fell
out with a quarter of a century earlier. On weekly fishing trips, Murilo Junior fills
the gap that separates him from Neto, a mediocre copy editor of self-help books
who has felt unwanted by his father since he was five years old, when his mother
committed suicide. It is from the son’s point of view that the third-person narrator
tells the story of their reunion.
As in Rodrigues’s other novels, there is a counterpoint of narrative voices.
Interspersed with the main story, we read the book that Murilo is writing about an
extraordinary player from the 1960s called Peralvo, who, according to him, was
blessed with supernatural powers and should have been “greater than Pelé”. The
alternation between the disenchanted realism of Neto’s story and the exuberant
magical realism of Peralvo’s is executed with great technical expertise.
The character of the old columnist is the vehicle for a celebration of the history of
Brazilian football, never before undertaken in Brazilian literature – a feat that is
facilitated by the author’s long experience as a sports journalist. Murilo, however,
is more than just that. Late in the day, as if he had been tricked by a football
feint, Neto finally discerns between the cracks inside his father’s narrative a dark
family secret.
Sérgio Rodrigues was born in Muriaé, Minas Gerais, Brazil, in 1962. He
has lived in Rio de Janeiro since 1979, where he built his career as a
journalist and writer. Sérgio has been a driving force in Brazilian journalism,
worked as a correspondent for Jornal do Brasil in London and a reporter for
major outlets in Brazil. He is the author of Todoprosa blog [www.todoprosa.
com.br] about literature and debuted as a fiction writer in 2000 with The
Man Who Killed the Writer, book of short stories. His novel Elza: The Girl
tells the poignant tale of a communist party leader’s tragic love affair in
1935 with comrade Elza Fernandes, code-named “The Girl,” an obscure
real character in Brazilian history: a beautiful 16-year old who fell under
suspicion of betraying the Party, and although the charge could not be
proved, was sentenced to death by Luiz Carlos Prestes, the most eminent
Latin American communist leader in the romantic era prior to the Cuban
revolution. The novel, which was featured in Machado de Assis Magazine,
will be published by AmazonCrossing in fall 2014.
This book is not about football but for the first time in Brazilian literature football is one of the
characters. Who would have thought that an entire life – and a novel – would fit into those two
seconds in which Pelé made that famous feint on Mazurkiewicz? A great performance by Sérgio
Rodrigues.”
Luis Fernando Verissimo
A novel about Br azilian football, sports journalism and pop culture, in which not everything is fantasy
and the ball is passed expertly and with a light touch. A brilliant goal by Sérgio Rodrigues, a Turguenev
from Rio de Janeiro, who takes his inspiration from Mario Filho and Nick Hornby.
Sergio Augusto
Standing up with difficulty, he moved away from the ball of heat given off by the open
fire and walked towards the verandah. You went after him. It was just after midday but
the winter had arrived with a vengeance. The frozen breath that came from the woods
embraced you both and at that moment you pictured your father in Guadalajara, a young
man over thirty with Félix’s sideburns, Rivelino’s bushy moustache, drinking beer and
eating guacamole, while down here the world as the five-year-old you knew it was coming to an end. It
was as if the whole of existence hinged on that summer in Mexico, winter in Brazil, when your father
refused to touch the ball, Pelé’s feint against Mazurkiewicz broke the spine of destiny and the world
fell apart. There are those moments in life when everything seems to happen at the same time, past
and future flattened into the present, as if nothing ever happened before or will ever happen again,
everything is continuously happening without the action ever being completed. On the Sunday when
Murilo Junior, in his house in Rocio, showed you the goal that Pelé did not score, you realised for
the first time in your life that it was the same day – 17 June 1970 – that Elvira had feinted the lax
safety precautions on the half-built Joá flyover, hurling herself onto the sea-lashed rocks below. With
sudden realisation, as if a butcher’s shop light had been switched on inside your head, you found
yourself forever imprisoned in that day, play, pause, rewind, play. As long as Pelé did not score that
goal you would be imprisoned in that day, only dreaming that life had gone on. At that moment you
looked at your father and relived for the last time, with breathtaking intensity, the old dream of killing
him.
“This was because Peralvo never played in the World Cup,” Murilo said, seemingly
immune to the waves of death that were emanating from his son, his gaze fixed on the
lead-green ridge of the hillsides silhouetted against the grey sky. “Peralvo was all set to
be even greater than Pelé, Neto. Life’s a bitch.
Sérgio Rodrigues
Elza the Girl
Elza didn’t know anything. Nothing at all. Or rather, yes, she knew how to make soap out
of ashes, was impeccable at pressing clothes with heavy irons overflowing with coals, not
letting the fabric burn or be soiled by the black smoke. She knew a lot of those things
that working-class women had to know in her time. She was the daughter of a Light
Co. worker, one of eight children, so she told me, and came from a town that used to be called the
Manchester Paulista, with a proletarian concentration larger than most big cities: Sorocaba. But she
had no polish, no political culture and little experience of the petty-bourgeois luxuries
that, by then, radio and especially cinema had started to implant in everyone’s minds,
rich and poor – Gessy Lever, the soap of the stars and all that crap. It was the beginning
of the avalanche of products that has now run over everything, and Elza looked at it with
curiosity.
Elza, a garota
Sérgio Rodrigues mixes literature and investigation to create a unique and
engaging novel. Molina is a journalist that, at age 43, decides to dedicate his life
exclusively to being a writer. In search of a story worthy of being told, he meets
Xerxes, who tells him about his infatuation for a girl named Elza, in the middle
of the Communist Coup, when Luis Carlos Prestes wanted to seize power and
was defeated. The love story, however, never got to term. Elza was murdered
by her peers of the Communist Party. Her body was found in 1940, buried in
the backyard of a simple house in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Did the Party
strangle her without certainty? (Sample translation available)
“With a fictional approach, the journalist discovers shady details of one
of the key moments of the political history of the country”.
Jornal do Brasil
“Sérgio Rodrigues finished his learning stage before showing himself.
Now he doesn’t owe anyone anything.”
Book review, published in Veja magazine.
Rights sold:
Portugal: 2010, Quetzal
English language:
Amazon Crossing
SOCORRO ACIOLI
SAINT’S HEAD
CABEÇA DO SANTO
Samuel goes to the little town of Candeia in search of his father, that left him
when he was a child. It was the last request of his mother, who’s just passed
away. When he arrives, he spends the rainy night in a small cave, but wakes up
startled at 5 AM with a bedlam of female voices, talking and praying at the same
time. Samuel runs out of the cave and realizes there is no one outside. The cave is
actually the hollow head, gigantic and abandoned, of an unfinished statue of St.
Anthony, and its body is on the top of the hill. Samuel has the gift of hearing the
prayers that women make to the saint, talking about love, and that reverberate
inside the saint’s head. Francisco, 15 years old, befriends Samuel and decides
to financially explore his gift, promoting weddings and shams. Little by little, the
town gets packed with religious people, attracted by Samuel’s “power”.
The mayor of Candeia decides to banish him and explode the St. Anthony’s head.
At the same time, Samuel finds out the truth about his father’s disappearance
and falls in love with a mysterious voice that he hears every day among the voices
that echo in the head.
SAINT’S
HEAD
FEBRUARY/14
Rights sold:
UK: Hot Key Books
Translation Rights: Hot Key
Books (UK)
Socorro Acioli was born in Fortaleza in 1975. She is a journalist with a
Masters in Brazilian Literature, and is undergoing a PhD in Literature Studies
from Universidade Federal Fluminense, in Rio de Janeiro. She began her
career in 2001 and, since then, has published books in different genres, like
the biographies “Frei Tito” (2001), and “Rachel de Queiroz” (2003), short
stories for children, and teen’s novels. In 2006, she was selected to take
part on the workshop “How to Tell a Tale”, given by Nobel Prize Laureate
Gabriel Garcia Márquez at Escola de Cinema de San Antonio de Los Baños,
Cuba. The author was chosen by Garcia Márquez himself from a synopsis
of the novel “A cabeça do santo”. In 2007, she was a visiting researcher at
the International Youth Library, in Munich, Germany, and has given lectures
in countries like Portugal, Bolivia, and Cape Verde. She also works as a
translator, essayist, and professor of Literary Theory.
Tony Bellotto
MACHU PICCHU
In the Hole
Rio de Janeiro is going through the worst gridlock of its history. Amid the endless
lines of cars, Zé Roberto and Chica, each stuck in different parts of the city are
trying to return home to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary.
Teo Zanquis is at the beach, in Ipanema, talking to himself. And the story that
he tells is his own, the story of a guitar player of a one-hit rock band from the
1980’s, whose albums can only be found in thrift stores in downtown São Paulo.
Zanquis’ professional and artistic life has reached its heyday very quickly and,
soon afterwards, with the same speed, plunged into oblivion. In In the Hole, Tony
Bellotto presents a loner that nears old age without illusions, mulling the antics of
the glory days of his youth. But this doesn’t stop Teo from seeking love in the body
of a young Korean girl, or strengthen ties with people he would never imagine
being friends with when he was a national semi-rock-idol, like Mrs. Gladys, an
elderly and eccentric neighbor from the one-room apartment where he lives
MACHU PICCHU
No buraco
It’s the perfect opportunity for both to reevaluate the last months of their lives.
To Zé Roberto, this means thinking of W19, the girl he met on Facebook and with
whom he has been practicing virtual sex for some time. Without ever having met
her, Zé Roberto is obsessed with the girl. And now she wants to meet him.
Chica is not into social networks, so her affair with her co-worker Helinho
happens between the sheets – not by a computer camera. Chica is happy: a
loving husband at home, the family and the life she chose.
But this precarious balance is about to fall apart…
“Machu Picchu”, deft and full of pop culture references, portrays with
dark humor the crisis of a family.
Cadão Volpato, Folha de São Paulo
Tony Bellotto (São Paulo, 1960) is a guitar player and song writer of the
Titãs, one of the most important bands of the history of Brazilian rock. He
made his debut in literature in 1995, with a detective novel whose main
character, Detective Bellini, has been in the silver screen in Bellini and the
Sphinx. Since 1999, Tony hosts the TV show Afinando a língua in Canal
Futura, which mixes literature with music to talk about the Portuguese
language and forms of expression. His books were published in Portugal,
Italy, and France.
Rights sold:
Portugal: 2011, Quetzal
Tony Bellotto
Bellini and the Sphinx
Bellini and the Spirits
Who is Ana Cíntia Lopes? Why are Camila and Dinéia missing? What does Fátima
want? Why is Fabian stalking Pompílio? Who killed Dr. Rafidjian? What secret
does Beatriz hide? The questions pile up in detective Remo Bellini’s head while
he goes through the underworld of São Paulo in search of answers. Little by little,
the mysteries are unveiled in a surprising way, until the deciphering of the final
riddle leaves Bellini perplexed, with an awful taste in his mouth.
A mysterious envelope is left under the door of Lobo Detective Agency. Inside,
US$ 5,000 and a murder complaint. The victim is attorney Arlindo Galvet, who
died during the São Silvestre Marathon, suddenly falling on the ground, with no
apparent cause. Torn between his ghostly client, love affairs, and imbroglios
with the Chinese mob, Bellini has a difficult task ahead. After chases through
Liberdade, the Asian neighborhood of São Paulo, and visits to a paranormal
facility, he begins to admit to himself that otherworldly forces can help him solve
this seemingly unsolvable crime.
Bellini e a Esfinge
Bellini e os Espíritos
Rights sold:
Italy: 2009, Cavallo di
Ferro
Portugal: 2008,
Bertrand Editora
Bellini and the Demon
Bellini e o Demônio
Detective Remo Bellini is still on the job. This time, he is torn between two cases:
to find a lost manuscript written by Dashiel Hammet, the great master of detective
novels, and solve the murder of the beautiful and young Silvia Maldini, found with
a shot wound in her forehead in the school’s bathroom. Always to the sound of
the blues, Bellini divides himself between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, between
unknown rich people and famous poor ones, among some love conquests and
many failures. In these demonic cases — with ingredients that include murder,
drug dealing, and sex — nothing (and no one) is exactly what it seems.
“Bellotto is a very good writer, has mastered a deft and colloquial
technique, and is ingenious when creating a nostalgic mood with
elements from the 1940’s.”
Folha de São Paulo
Rights sold:
France: 2007, Acts Sud
Portugal: 2009, Quetzal
Vanessa Barbara
LETTUCE NIGHTS
At this point, Otto no longer went out into the backyard unless it was to hang clothes on
the line. That was where Otto and Ada used to spend afternoons lying in the sun, reading
cookbooks and doing crossword puzzles. Ada was always looking for the definitive recipe
for breaded cauliflower, one in which it wouldn’t fall out of the breading when you fried it
and that would keep it glistening and crispy. She never found it. She used to stretch out her legs ‘to
get my fat rolls nice and toasty’ and go on talking about the lawn, the plants, the tulip bulbs she’d
got as a gift from Teresa last winter. Otto and Ada’s yard was the biggest in town, a grassy field full
of rusty tools, old buckets and tulips waiting to emerge. Ada loved the backyard. When Otto was with
her, he loved it too; on his own, he hated the
tulips as much as he hated the neighbours.
NOITES DE ALFACE
After fifty years of marriage, a grouchy old man suddenly loses his wife.
Heartbroken, Otto refuses to interact with the residents of the tiny little town
where he lives, but finds himself being harassed by the noises and intrusions
of his neighbors: a pharmacist addicted to side effects, an esoteric old lady,
a hyperactive typist, an army veteran, a persistent mailman, and a young
anthropologist specialized in Eskimos.
Little by little, inspired by the police shows he loves, he gathers evidence of a
mystery, an obscure incident that the community tries to hide. His insomnia gets
worse; the nights get longer. Maybe his wife was involved. Or maybe Otto is just
hearing things. Among noises from the blender, barks, quarrels, and spankings,
the suspense begins to corner the old man, who needs to decide if he wants to
know the truth or not.
Rights sold:
France: Éditions Zulma
Vanessa Barbara (São Paulo, 1982) is a journalist, translator, and writer. She
is also the publisher of the Hortaliça newspaper (www.hortifruti.org), prestigious
media outlet that, in 2012 celebrated its ten years of existence. She writes for
Piauí magazine, works as a translator and senior proof reader for Companhia das
Letras, and is a columnist on Blog da Companhia. She has translated, among
other works, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2011), and Gertrude Stein’s
Three Lives (2008). She was guest author at the 6th Feira Literária Internacional
de Paraty (FLIP) in 2008. In 2012, she was selected as one of the twenty new
promises in Brazilian literature by Granta’s magazine issue dedicated to The
Best Young Brazilian Novelists.
With the blanket over his knees, Otto had the sudden urge to go to the kitchen and cook up some
tasty cauliflower, but it still felt too soon. So he stayed put, blinking his eyes vaguely. One after
another, the sounds, smells and sights of the neighbourhood found their way into his
living room (blender, Roach-B-Gone, mad dog), and he passed the time assembling these
pieces into stories to tell.
VANESSA BARBARA & EMILIO FRAIA
The Summer of Chibo
O Verão do Chibo
In The Summer of Chibo, written in partnership with Emilio Fraia, a boy no
more than seven years old, immersed in a very singular universe, describes
his adventures during his summer vacation, in the middle of a corn field in the
company of his friends. But this is a different summer. Because Chibo, his older
brother, mysteriously disappears, and all the other boys seem to do the same.
(Sample available)
This is a subtle work, often humorous, other times touching, about the mysteries
that surround growing up. It was a finalist in the Prêmio São Paulo de Literatura.
A little gem about the mysteries that surround becoming a grown-up.
O Estado de S. Paulo
Another world in miniature, with lyricism and absurdity to match the
fantasies and traumas of childhood.
Folha de S. Paulo
Emilio Fraia was born in São Paulo in 1982. He is a literary
editor at the publishing house Cosac Naify, where he has
worked with authors such as Enrique Vila-Matas, Antonio
Tabucchi, Macedonio Fernández, and William Kennedy. As
a journalist, he has written for the magazines piauí and Trip.
His novel, O verão do Chibo, co-written with Vanessa Barbara
(The Summer of Chibo, Alfaguara, 2008, English translation
excerpted in the TWO LINES anthology Passageways, October
2012) was short-listed for the São Paulo Literature Prize. His
graphic novel Campo em Branco, illustrated by DW Ribatski,
was published in June 2013 (Blank Field, Companhia das
Letras). He was selected for Granta’s issue dedicated to The
Best Young Brazilian Novelists.
The boys are out there in the cornfield where the shooting begins. Bruno breaks out ahead, his
stomach weak from laughing so hard, behind him comes Moptop, who’s always falling into the
same potholes; he opens fire with colorful ammunition—I can swear, even from a distance, that the
gumdrop blitz claimed the field and pierced the air like confetti. My brother, Chibo, was in the back
seat. I was in front, on my knees, with my head hanging out the window.
From the car, I kept sight of Moptop, who couldn’t manage to peg anyone, especially not in the middle of all that
corn, and once again the Bulgarian spy would reach the neutral country’s border under a downpour of banana
chews. Wounded in the back, possibly, he’d climb the hemp rope up to the tree house and call out you sissy you
sissy. Moptop would say it didn’t count because the game wasn’t fun anymore and Her Majesty’s plans were
encrypted or Bulgaria didn’t even exist (and he’d be right, for sure). Then he’d burst into the most decadent,
overblown tantrum since our preschool days and start beating up on the younger kids. But not on Chibo, of course.
My brother was the oldest of all; he’d just turned twelve, was strong, always stuck up for me, and—I looked in
the rearview mirror. He was silent: my words faded away like a station gone off the air. When the car stopped, I
hopped out on one foot, and Chibo, full of lightning, didn’t move a muscle. He just sat there, distant. I tried to say
something but got the hiccups as I slammed the car door shut (and I know everyone laughs whenever
I start a sentence and then get stuck on a hiccup, cut off by a jolt that makes me lose my balance),
so I kept quiet. I swallowed my breath and stood watching as the car got smaller and smaller, until it
disappeared along the edge of the cornfield.
Zuenir Ventura
Sacred Family
Sagrada Família
In his new book, “Sacred Family”, Zuenir Ventura intertwines memoirs and fiction
to create a lyrical and captivating narrative about love that endures time and the
loss of innocence. With nostalgia and good humor, the narrator goes on a journey
to the past, to the fictional city of Florida, to recount his life among a big family
from Rio de Janeiro. “This is a book strongly inspired by my memories, but, so as
to not create any problems with still living relatives, I’ve invented many things,
changed the names, put a literary spin in many episodes. What I really wanted
was to tell a story that represented the hypocrisy of that time”, says Zuenir
about his childhood and teenage years lived in a “typically Nelson Rodrigues’
universe”. With characters and scenes that, the author admits, resemble, in fact,
characters from Nelson Rodrigues’ texts, Zuenir recreates with great tenderness
the yearnings and tribulations of a family living in the mountains near Rio de
Janeiro, from the 1940’s to a time not so long ago.
“We are continuously learning from his acuity as a journalist and from
his sensitivity as a man who feels involved and supportive”
Luis Fernando Verissimo
“That night I lost my balance and my innocence. I saw something I shouldn’t have seen
and fell to the ground. It was possibly the coldest night of the winter and, on top of that, I
really had to pee. I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave my post, but I couldn’t hold it, and the
cold only made it worse. I was shivering. I put my hands in my pockets, rubbed my legs
together, and tapped my feet, doing everything that I could to keep from peeing my pants.
Auntie Nonoca usually got her injections at the back of a pharmacy, where there was a small exam
room reserved for vaccinations and other kinds of basic care. I was supposed to stay at the front
door and ask customers to come back in half an hour. Mr. Canuto is busy giving injections and cannot
be of service right now, was what I was supposed to say. This generally happened between 7 and 8
o’clock, after dinner, but those days my aunt rarely ate dinner.
While her sister, two daughters and I sat at the dinner table, Auntie Nonoca would sit down in front
of the mirror on the dressing table in her room and carry out a meticulous ritual. She combed her
straight black hair, pulled it up into a lovely bun, and put on blush, which was the only kind of
make-up she used. She would open a round paper box, carefully pull out a little sponge with a pink
pompom on top, and powder her cheekbones, leaving a fine almost unnoticeable layer.
“Is it too much?” She would ask invariably.
I ate as quickly as possible in order to catch the tail end of this ceremony, which was fascinating
to me. It always ended with my aunt opening a bottle of RoyalBriar extract, neatly wetting the tip of
her index finger and massaging the skin behind her ears. On her way out, she would examine her
whole body in the mirror, turn to the side, suck in her non-existent stomach, push up her
breasts, and bite her lips a few times to make them redder. Then she would grab her long
wool coat and say, “let’s go.” I would let my gaze wander over those slightly rebellious
curves, which were hugged tightly by a black dress that struggled to hold everything in. “
Zuenir Ventura (Além paraíba, 1931) was a reporter, editor, and editorin-chief of important media outlets in Brazil, achieving an extraordinary
journalistic career. During forty years, he was also a college professor. With
inquisitive talent and literary refinement, he is the author of investigative
works, essays, and novels. Zuenir won many important awards, and has a
column in O Globo newspaper.
www.agenciariff.com.br