LITERARY PROGRAM
The 70 authors who represent Brazil at the Book Fair were selected by a Trust formed
by the literary critic Manuel Pinto da Costa, coordinator of the Brazilian literary
program in Frankfurt, Antonio Martinelli, and Professor Antonieta Cunha. Authors who
will participate in other events were chosen by German curators, often in collaboration
with the Brazilian curators.
Criteria for selection included: authors published or being published abroad, especially
in Germany; award-winning authors in Brazil and abroad; diversity and plurality of
styles, genres and authors' birthplace; the balance between new publications and
established authors and, of course, artistic taste.
Program - Brazil Pavilion During the Frankfurt Book Fair. Literary discussions with
Brazilian authors will mainly take place in the Brazil Pavilion, a space of 2,500 m² with
a conceptual exhibition conceived by Daniela Thomas. Drinking at the fountain of
Brazilian Modernism: the "general constructive will" in Brazilian art - as described by
Hélio Oiticica. The sinuous layout will embrace the Book Fair’s public in Frankfurt, as
they wander through this great public square listening to music, meeting amazing
Brazilian authors of fiction, traveling through every corner of this vast country.
PAVILION TABLES
OPENING
The writers Ana Maria Machado (President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters) and
Luiz Ruffato talk about the prospects and challenges regarding the country's culture at
an event in the presence of the Brazilian Minister of Culture, Marta Suplicy.
OCTOBER 9 TO OCTOBER 13
October 9:
10:30 – Reading/CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Lyricism and irony
In their children's books and narratives, the writer and illustrator Angela-Lago and the
storyteller Marina Colasanti explore, through lyricism, irony, and humor all the
subjective complexity and richness present in the fantasies (and ghosts) of a child’s
universe.
11:30 – Reading/PROSE: The convergences of memory
Authors of some of the most important works of fiction in the current landscape of
Brazilian literature, the writer Nelida Piñon (first woman to chair the Brazilian
Academy of Letters) and novelist and journalist Carlos Heitor Cony have in common
prose memoirs, in which the family and political history of the country converge.
12:30 – Reading/ POETRY: Dissent of life and form
Originally from the "marginal poetry" (a current of counterculture that emerged during
the Brazilian military dictatorship), Chacal reads his poems alongside Age de
Carvalho, a poet living in Vienna who lifts from his condition as a voluntary exile (or
"terminal tourist") a strong voice of foreignness and hermetic dissidence.
13:30 - Literary Panel: Formation and Crisis in the Nationality Debate
"No Brazil exists. And who's to say Brazilians do?" Thus the poet Carlos Drummond de
Andrade epitomized the theme of national identity that permeates Brazilian culture.
José Miguel Wisnik and Walnice N. Galvão – two of Brazil’s leading essayists –
discuss through its literature, the origin and the crises in the debate about national
identity.
14:30 – Reading/PROSE: The cracks in reality
Renowned artist, essayist, poet and composer, Nuno Ramos’ prose carries a sense of
friction with reality, delving into the gaps and detours also explored by the miniature
cosmology of Veronica Stigger, author of the sarcastic short stories Os anões.
15:30 – Brazil under debate: Views on Brazil and its challenges
An encounter between the historian/anthropologists Manuela Carneiro da Cunha
(author of Cultura com aspas and Negros, estrangeiros; organizer of the História dos
índios no Brasil) and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (author of O espetáculo das raças, nem
preto nem branco muito pelo contrário; project coordinator of História do Brasil
nação: 1808-2010).
16:30 – Reading/PROSE: Frantic gears
In the universe of Marçal Aquino, author of the novel Eu receberia as piores notícias
de seus lindos lábios, passionate obsessions and personal vendettas obey the breakneck
pace of social gears which, in City of God and Desde que o samba é samba, by Paulo
Lins, devastate the urban fabric and create a culture of marginal resistance.
October 10:
10:30 - Reading CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Fables about differences
The writer and illustrator Eva Furnari presents the poet-rabbit Felpo Filva, a striking
character from a work that plays with (not always harmonious) ways of managing the
world and dealing with differences. Roger Mello exposes a world of fables in which
words and images conjure up distant realms of fishermen, colliers and boys from the
swamps.
11:30 - Reading PROSE: Writing the mismatch
Cristovão Tezza, author of The Eternal Son, the most acclaimed Brazilian book in
recent years, reads excerpts from his latest novel, Um erro emocional. Teixeira Coelho
presents excerpts from História natural da ditadura – where the catastrophic
experiences of the twentieth century in Europe and Latin America are expressed in a
hybrid genre of essay, memory and fiction.
12:30 - Reading POETRY: Perplexed Contemplations
The religiosity of Adélia Prado (whose poetry includes elements of erotic fervor) and
the desolate lyricism of Hector Ferraz Mello (observer of inhospitable urban
landscapes): two poetics that perceive everyday banality with metaphysical irony.
13:30 - Literary Panel: From the avant-garde to the post-utopian
The mutations of literary expression, from modernity to post-modernity, are the subject
of the dialogue between Luiz Costa Lima, one of the great theoreticians of mimesis,
and Flora Süssekind, interpreter of contemporary literature beyond the Brazilian
viewpoint.
14:30 - Reading PROSE: Detours and dark corners
In the novel Os malaquias, winner of the 2011 José Saramago prize, Andrea del Fuego
uses the family memoirs as the starting point for the (sometimes fantastic) detours that
constitute the bizarre essence of reality. In his short stories, Marcelino Freire captures
with mesmerizing progress the speech form of characters that inhabit the dark corners of
the streets.
15:30 - Reading PROSE: Exposed Nerves
In the novel Paisagem com dromedário, by Carola Saavedra, a character rehashes the
disasters of a love triangle. In the tale O telhado e o violinista, by the novelist Cynthia
Moscovich, a domestic scene recapitulates the disasters of the Jewish people. In the
voice of these Brazilian writers, the raw nerve of subjectivity beyond repair is exposed.
16:30 - Reading PROSE: Obsessive variations
The fragmented and eschatological prose of Drained, from the also graphic artist and
playwright Lourenço Mutarelli, and the descriptive density of Barba ensopada de
sangue, from the writer and translator Daniel Galera, present variations on themes such
as obsession, delusion and memory in high-voltage, existential novels.
October 11:
10:30 - Reading CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Questions of rebellion
Marcelo, marmelo, martelo and O reizinho mandão, by Ruth Rocha, and A marca de
uma lágrima and the series Os karas, by Pedro Bandeira, influenced the minds of
generations of Brazilian readers with their exposure of the questioning and rebellion of
children and teenagers.
11:30 - Reading PROSE: Dissecting the unusual
A figurante, by Sérgio Sant'Anna, and Fantasmagoria de motores mortos, by Joca
Reiners Terron, are tales that investigate the past in an analysis of that which is trivial
or ephemeral, but which insists on having an impact on the present – synthesizing the
prose of two writers who establish a strained relationship between language and
disturbing, sinister content.
12:30 - Reading POETRY: Order and Disorder
In the writing of these two poets, which is marked by irony and by a critical-satirical
impulse, the formal precision of Alice Ruiz’s haikais and Paulo Henriques Britto’s
variations on the sonnet serve to explore the contrast between the rigor of the language
and the disorder of the world.
13:30 – Brazil under Debate: Time and Freedom
The psychoanalyst, poet and essayist Maria Rita Kehl is part of the Comissão
Nacional da Verdade (National Commission for Truth, which investigates human rights
violations in Brazil). In the work of the storyteller and chronicler Rosiska Darcy de
Oliveira, the feminine question appears as a destabilizing and emancipatory theme. The
authors discuss the relationship between time and freedom, with its ethical implications.
14:30 - Reading PROSE: Detached emotion
The short story Nós, a maré e o morto by Antonio Carlos Viana narrates a funeral
procession. In the novel Olhos secos, Bernardo Ajzenberg’s main character alternates
between experiences of excitement, utopia, frustration and failure. In common between
these two authors is a precision of style that exposes emotion in a raw and detached
manner.
15:30 - Literary panel: The biographical adventure
Two masters of biography. With Fernando Morais, the trajectories of Olga (an icon of
Brazilian communism), Assis Chateaubriand (newspaper and arts magnate) and Paulo
Coelho (wizard of the written word). With Ruy Castro, Mané Garrincha (the drunken
genius of football) and Nelson Rodrigues (chronicler of the tragedy of the Brazilian
soul).
16:30 - Reading PROSE: False move
Language is the protagonist in the work of these two writers. In the novel Lorde, by
João Gilberto Noll, the wanderings of the character (and his alter ego) through London.
In Deus é bom nº 6, by André Sant'Anna, a preacher is drugged by his own religious
litany. In both, the dense and obsessive prose offers both search and captivity at the
same time.
October 12:
10:30 - Reading PROSE: Polyphonic View
The proliferation of views in two different moments of Brazilian literature: in Zero, by
Ignacio de Loyola Brandão, the polyphonic city decimates its inhabitants. In Antonio,
by Beatriz Bracher, each character discovers the same family secret. And both have
the crushing weight of past history and personal trauma.
11:30 - Reading PROSE: Hidden anguish in the margin
In Ladrão de cadáveres, by Patricia Melo, an accident triggers ethical deliberations and
unveils hidden motivation within social ties. Deus foi almoçar, by Ferrez, exposes
feelings of helplessness and anguish in a context of financial deprivation. Both become
even more complex within a plot that identifies with the violence of the underworld and
urban margins.
12:30 - Reading POETRY: Cannibal satire
Affonso Romano de Sant'Anna (author of the iconic Que país é este?) and the poet
Nicolas Behr (Eu engoli Brasília) respond with poetic experimentalism, satire and
indignation to the cannibalization of Brazilian history.
13:30 - Reading PROSE: Parallel worlds
Maria Esther Maciel and Nelson Oliveira (who also signs as Luiz Bras), two writers
with intense involvement in literary criticism, present their works, which straddle the
cerebral arbitrariness of fictional games and the parallel worlds of the imagination.
14:30 - Reading PROSE: Allegories and utopias
From Brazil to Brasilia. In the modern classic Viva o povo brasileiro, João Ubaldo
Ribeiro makes an allegorical journey through the history of the country in Cidade livre,
a novel by João Almino which shows the anti-utopian counterpart of the construction
plan for the modernist capital.
15:30 – Brazil under debate: The country of displacements
Historian and political scientist José Murilo de Carvalho debates the uniqueness of the
Brazilian political and social development within the Latin American context with
historian Mary del Priore, author of books on private life in the country and the
connections between Brazil and Europe.
16:30 - Reading PROSE: Subjective Ruins
In the novel O filho da mãe, a love story in ruins, Bernardo Carvalho takes the theme
of uncertain identity, omnipresent in his work, into the context of the war in Chechnya.
In Diário da queda, by Michel Laub, the rubble of presumably forgotten results in
incommunicative personal relationships.
October 13:
10:00 - HQ & Graphic Novel: Meeting of generations
The creators of iconic comic book characters - Ziraldo (father of Menino Maluquinho)
and Mauricio de Sousa (author of Turma da Mônica) - meet with the regenerators of
the Brazilian graphic novel, Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá, Fernando Gonsales, Lelis
and Lourenço Mutarelli.
11:30 - Reading PROSE: Journeys and losses
With the presence of Ronaldo Correia de Brito, author of the novels Galileia and
Estive lá fora, globalization inserts the northeastern exodus into a context of culture
shock alongside the age-old traumas broached in the stealthy prose of Adriana Lisboa,
author of Sinfonia em Branco, Um beijo de Colombina and the recently-published
Hanói.
12.30 – Brazil under debate: Revolution in Science, reinventing the Self
Originator of revolutionary research with neural prostheses and author of Muito além do
nosso eu, neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis presents the progress and future prospects of
knowledge beyond the brain, which could expand the boundaries of human action
beyond the body and the notion of self.
13:00 - Reading CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: Ancestral waters
In Meu avô Apolinário, Daniel Munduruku records the teachings that deepened his
knowledge and pride in his indigenous ancestry. In Lampião e Lancelote, by Fernando
Vilela, medieval knights encounter the bandits of the Brazilian backlands. And the
tributaries of memory – both lived and invented – flow into the same river.
15:30 – Hand Over Ceremony