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