HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014

CHILDREN/YA FICTION
MY AFRICAN PRINCESS
THE MACHINE
MINHA PRINCESSA AFRICANA
A MÁQUINA
ADRIANA FALCÃO
(Salamandra, new edition August 2013)
MARCIO VASSALO
(Abacatte, 2011)
“Minha princesa africana” tells a love story made of endless
letters and phone calls from across the ocean. “Her name was
Marinela. No one believed that my girlfriend was a princess.
Some people didn’t even know there were princesses in Africa. But mine was from there,
from Angola. Marinela was very white and had more freckles than the sky of Luanda.
Actually, we had seen each other only once in our lives, and every day we awaited for the
day when we would see each other again. While the day didn’t arrive, Marinela called me
every night and we would talk until she had fallen asleep. With her Portuguese accent, the
princess would tell me that she could only sleep after hearing my voice. Or was it me that
could only sleep after talking in her ear? Oh, my letters to Marinela were even longer than
the hours we would spend listening to one another, and the hours we spent listening to one
another were longer than the Nile”. With papier maché illustrations by artist Carol W., who
has created exclusive pieces for the story, “Minha princesa africana” makes us want to love
without haste, but with the deepest urgency to be happy.
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.
ALMOST COMPLETELY HAPPILY
EVER AFTER
THE HEAD OF THE SAINT
ANTONIO PRATA (Editora 34, February 2012)
SOCORRO ACIOLI
(Cia das Letras, February 2014)
FELIZES QUASE SEMPRE
A CABEÇA DO SANTO
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 avalable)
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.
SHORT STORY OF A TINY LOVE
THE PILAR SERIES
BREVE HISTÓRIA DE UM PEQUENO AMOR
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 (S. Fisher), France (Bayard), Latin
America (Vergara y Riba), China (Shangai BBT Communication).
MARINA COLASANTI
(FTD, August 2013, 48 pp)
FLAVIA LINS E SILVA
(Zahar)
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.
SEVEN BONES AND A CURSE
ROSA AMANDA STRAUSZ
(Global, new edition August 2013)
SETE OSSOS E UMA MALDIÇÃO
© Gabriel Andrade
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.
PILAR’S DIARY IN THE AMAZON (2011)
In this book of horror stories, Rosa Amanda Strausz constructs
apparently common stories that, through an expertly crafted
suspense, become horrifying narratives. But, in this case, the
fear doesn’t paralyze, on the contrary, it only increases the
desire to get to the next page, something that requires strength.
In “Seven bones and a curse” there’s no blood dripping or splattered brains, as is informed
in the dust jacket. Nothing explicit or distasteful. In it, the reader’s imagination is in charge
of creating the macabre scenes forged through an elegant text. And it is exactly this
suggestion of terror, fantastic literature of the best kind, that makes it so compelling.
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.
PILAR’S DIARY IN EGYPT (2012)
Highlights 2013/2014
FICTION
NONFICTION
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
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
(*) contact Nicole Witt
(**) contact Anja Saile
(***) Carmen Balcells
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.
PILAR’S DIARY OF MACCHU PICCHU (April, 2014)
www.agenciariff.com.br
Lucia Riff . lucia@agenciariff.com.br
HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014
HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014
SUCH A BRILLIANT THING, THE RAIN
THE MARRIAGE EQUATION
LETTUCE NIGHTS
40 DAYS
ESSA COISA BRILHANTE QUE É A CHUVA
A EQUAÇÃO DO CASAMENTO
NOITES DE ALFACE
40 DIAS
CINTIA MOSCOVICH
(Record, 2012 – 144 pp)
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.”
AT 7 AND AT 40
JOÃO ANZANELLO CARRASCOZA
(Cosac Naify, August 2013 – 224 pp)
LUIZ ALBERTO HANNS
(Nonfiction - Cia. das Letras, August 2013 – 264 pp)
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. The
current model of egalitarian marriage, aimed at personal happiness and everlasting love,
demands an adjustment of expectations that wasn’t required in the 19th century or the
beginning of the 20th century. It is time to change perspectives and rules of coexisting. We
have to obtain matrimonial skills that, until recently, we didn’t even know were necessary.
This is what “The Marriage Equation” deals with: the adjustments in the desires that each
one has to do on their own — and also with their partners. The equation presents six
dimensions that researches show to be crucial so that husband and wife stay married and
content doing so. It allows the discussion of contemporary marriage and helps you ponder
about your own marriage and what can (or can’t) be changed in it.
THE STOLEN BOOK
FLÁVIO CARNEIRO
(Rocco, September 2013 - 224 pp)
MARIA VALÉRIA REZENDE
(Alfaguara, March 2014)
VANESSA BARBARA
(Alfaguara, October 2013)
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. (Sample translation available)
Rights sold to: Éditions Zulma, France.
BEETHOVEN’S LAST QUARTETS
AND OTHER STORIES
TIME IS A FLOWING RIVER
Luis Fernando Verissimo (Objetiva, October 2013)
O LIVRO ROUBADO
OS
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!
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.
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.
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.
SALT
GOLD MINING
NAKED IN BOOTS
FROM THE WALLS, MY LOVE,
THE SLAVES ARE WATCHING
LETÍCIA WIERZCHOWSKI
(Intrínseca, August 2013 – 240 pp)
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. (Sample translation available)
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. (Sample translation available)
Beatriz Bracher
(Editora 34, September 2013 -136 pp)
GARIMPO
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 “My Love”
further. From a conversation on a chat site, in “Michel and Flora”,
to the longest story, that gives title to the book, written as entries
in a journal, and a screenplay draft in “For a love movie”, 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”. (Sample translation
available)
QUARTETOS
DE
BEETHOVEN
Lya Luft
(Record, March 2014)
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. (Sample translation available)
ÚLTIMOS
Summoned to move to the extreme south of the country by her
only daughter, who wants to have her own children and expects
her mother to take care of them, Alice begrudgingly agrees. However, as soon as she gets
there, her daughter and son-in-law leave for a long period of studies abroad, putting off sine
die the project of grandchildren. In Alice, betrayed, anger and bitterness arise. Under the
pretext of helping a woman from Paraíba find her son, a construction worker in Porto Alegre,
from whom the desperate mother hasn’t heard from, Alice goes looking for vague clues: a
name, Cícero Araújo, the name of a slum where she doesn’t find him. Following successive
leads, suggested by those who have heard the story of the lost son, she spends forty days
and nights wandering the streets of Porto Alegre, not sending news about her wellbeing to
anyone, in a search that, little by little, loses its objective purpose, exploring the city and
herself inside and out, discovering the world — Wonderland — that exists in the holes that
the city’s surface hides. Exhausted, she returns home and records what happens to her,
dialoging with the Barbie doll printed on the cover of the notebook in which she writes.
ANTONIO PRATA
(Cia das Letras, October 2013)
NU DE BOTAS
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.
O TEMPO É UM RIO QUE CORRE
MARCELO FERRONI (Cia. das Letras, April 2014)
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.
DIVORCE
THE FEINT
SERGIO Y.
OLD BOYS
DIVÓRCIO
O DRIBLE
SERGIO Y.
VELHOS MENINOS
RICARDO LÍSIAS
(Alfaguara, August 2013 – 240 pp)
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. (Sample translation available)
SÉRGIO RODRIGUES
(Cia das Letras, September 2013 – 224 pp)
This third novel by Sérgio Rodrigues is centered on the character
of an eighty-year-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. (Sample translation available)
ALEXANDRE VIDAL PORTO
(Cia das Letras, March 2014)
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.
Livia Garcia-Roza
(Cia. das Letras, May 2014)
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.
HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014
HIGHLIGHTS 2013/2014
SUCH A BRILLIANT THING, THE RAIN
THE MARRIAGE EQUATION
LETTUCE NIGHTS
40 DAYS
ESSA COISA BRILHANTE QUE É A CHUVA
A EQUAÇÃO DO CASAMENTO
NOITES DE ALFACE
40 DIAS
CINTIA MOSCOVICH
(Record, 2012 – 144 pp)
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.”
AT 7 AND AT 40
JOÃO ANZANELLO CARRASCOZA
(Cosac Naify, August 2013 – 224 pp)
LUIZ ALBERTO HANNS
(Nonfiction - Cia. das Letras, August 2013 – 264 pp)
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. The
current model of egalitarian marriage, aimed at personal happiness and everlasting love,
demands an adjustment of expectations that wasn’t required in the 19th century or the
beginning of the 20th century. It is time to change perspectives and rules of coexisting. We
have to obtain matrimonial skills that, until recently, we didn’t even know were necessary.
This is what “The Marriage Equation” deals with: the adjustments in the desires that each
one has to do on their own — and also with their partners. The equation presents six
dimensions that researches show to be crucial so that husband and wife stay married and
content doing so. It allows the discussion of contemporary marriage and helps you ponder
about your own marriage and what can (or can’t) be changed in it.
THE STOLEN BOOK
FLÁVIO CARNEIRO
(Rocco, September 2013 - 224 pp)
MARIA VALÉRIA REZENDE
(Alfaguara, March 2014)
VANESSA BARBARA
(Alfaguara, October 2013)
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. (Sample translation available)
Rights sold to: Éditions Zulma, France.
BEETHOVEN’S LAST QUARTETS
AND OTHER STORIES
TIME IS A FLOWING RIVER
Luis Fernando Verissimo (Objetiva, October 2013)
O LIVRO ROUBADO
OS
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!
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.
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.
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.
SALT
GOLD MINING
NAKED IN BOOTS
FROM THE WALLS, MY LOVE,
THE SLAVES ARE WATCHING
LETÍCIA WIERZCHOWSKI
(Intrínseca, August 2013 – 240 pp)
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. (Sample translation available)
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. (Sample translation available)
Beatriz Bracher
(Editora 34, September 2013 -136 pp)
GARIMPO
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 “My Love”
further. From a conversation on a chat site, in “Michel and Flora”,
to the longest story, that gives title to the book, written as entries
in a journal, and a screenplay draft in “For a love movie”, 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”. (Sample translation
available)
QUARTETOS
DE
BEETHOVEN
Lya Luft
(Record, March 2014)
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. (Sample translation available)
ÚLTIMOS
Summoned to move to the extreme south of the country by her
only daughter, who wants to have her own children and expects
her mother to take care of them, Alice begrudgingly agrees. However, as soon as she gets
there, her daughter and son-in-law leave for a long period of studies abroad, putting off sine
die the project of grandchildren. In Alice, betrayed, anger and bitterness arise. Under the
pretext of helping a woman from Paraíba find her son, a construction worker in Porto Alegre,
from whom the desperate mother hasn’t heard from, Alice goes looking for vague clues: a
name, Cícero Araújo, the name of a slum where she doesn’t find him. Following successive
leads, suggested by those who have heard the story of the lost son, she spends forty days
and nights wandering the streets of Porto Alegre, not sending news about her wellbeing to
anyone, in a search that, little by little, loses its objective purpose, exploring the city and
herself inside and out, discovering the world — Wonderland — that exists in the holes that
the city’s surface hides. Exhausted, she returns home and records what happens to her,
dialoging with the Barbie doll printed on the cover of the notebook in which she writes.
ANTONIO PRATA
(Cia das Letras, October 2013)
NU DE BOTAS
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.
O TEMPO É UM RIO QUE CORRE
MARCELO FERRONI (Cia. das Letras, April 2014)
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.
DIVORCE
THE FEINT
SERGIO Y.
OLD BOYS
DIVÓRCIO
O DRIBLE
SERGIO Y.
VELHOS MENINOS
RICARDO LÍSIAS
(Alfaguara, August 2013 – 240 pp)
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. (Sample translation available)
SÉRGIO RODRIGUES
(Cia das Letras, September 2013 – 224 pp)
This third novel by Sérgio Rodrigues is centered on the character
of an eighty-year-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. (Sample translation available)
ALEXANDRE VIDAL PORTO
(Cia das Letras, March 2014)
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.
Livia Garcia-Roza
(Cia. das Letras, May 2014)
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.
CHILDREN/YA FICTION
MY AFRICAN PRINCESS
THE MACHINE
MINHA PRINCESSA AFRICANA
A MÁQUINA
ADRIANA FALCÃO
(Salamandra, new edition August 2013)
MARCIO VASSALO
(Abacatte, 2011)
“Minha princesa africana” tells a love story made of endless
letters and phone calls from across the ocean. “Her name was
Marinela. No one believed that my girlfriend was a princess.
Some people didn’t even know there were princesses in Africa. But mine was from there,
from Angola. Marinela was very white and had more freckles than the sky of Luanda.
Actually, we had seen each other only once in our lives, and every day we awaited for the
day when we would see each other again. While the day didn’t arrive, Marinela called me
every night and we would talk until she had fallen asleep. With her Portuguese accent, the
princess would tell me that she could only sleep after hearing my voice. Or was it me that
could only sleep after talking in her ear? Oh, my letters to Marinela were even longer than
the hours we would spend listening to one another, and the hours we spent listening to one
another were longer than the Nile”. With papier maché illustrations by artist Carol W., who
has created exclusive pieces for the story, “Minha princesa africana” makes us want to love
without haste, but with the deepest urgency to be happy.
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.
ALMOST COMPLETELY HAPPILY
EVER AFTER
THE HEAD OF THE SAINT
ANTONIO PRATA (Editora 34, February 2012)
SOCORRO ACIOLI
(Cia das Letras, February 2014)
FELIZES QUASE SEMPRE
A CABEÇA DO SANTO
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 avalable)
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.
SHORT STORY OF A TINY LOVE
THE PILAR SERIES
BREVE HISTÓRIA DE UM PEQUENO AMOR
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 (S. Fisher), France (Bayard), Latin
America (Vergara y Riba), China (Shangai BBT Communication).
MARINA COLASANTI
(FTD, August 2013, 48 pp)
FLAVIA LINS E SILVA
(Zahar)
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.
SEVEN BONES AND A CURSE
ROSA AMANDA STRAUSZ
(Global, new edition August 2013)
SETE OSSOS E UMA MALDIÇÃO
© Gabriel Andrade
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.
PILAR’S DIARY IN THE AMAZON (2011)
In this book of horror stories, Rosa Amanda Strausz constructs
apparently common stories that, through an expertly crafted
suspense, become horrifying narratives. But, in this case, the
fear doesn’t paralyze, on the contrary, it only increases the
desire to get to the next page, something that requires strength.
In “Seven bones and a curse” there’s no blood dripping or splattered brains, as is informed
in the dust jacket. Nothing explicit or distasteful. In it, the reader’s imagination is in charge
of creating the macabre scenes forged through an elegant text. And it is exactly this
suggestion of terror, fantastic literature of the best kind, that makes it so compelling.
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.
PILAR’S DIARY IN EGYPT (2012)
Highlights 2013/2014
FICTION
NONFICTION
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
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
(*) contact Nicole Witt
(**) contact Anja Saile
(***) Carmen Balcells
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.
PILAR’S DIARY OF MACCHU PICCHU (April, 2014)
www.agenciariff.com.br
Lucia Riff . lucia@agenciariff.com.br