August 20, 2010

Brazilian Friday - Érico Veríssimo

Hello, hello!
I'm here today to teach you! Yes people! I'll teach you a little something about brazilian authors and brazilian books. Some were translated into English, some weren't, some are dead, some are alive.

Are you up for that?

Érico Veríssimo


So, I started with a writer that's, well, dead. His son is a writer too, but (no ofense to Luis Fernando Veríssimo) I still think Érico was probably the only good brazilian writer for historical romances - that take place in Brazil, too, I've read others that are great but they take place in Europe, mostly.
Some history: Érico was born in December 17th, 1905 and died in November 28th, 1975.
At the age of 9 he already "published" a magazine and read authors like Dostoievski, and his first short story was published in 1929.

I think his most well known work is "Time and the wind" (O Tempo e o Vento) which is a trilogy split into "The Continent" (O continente), "The Portrait" (O Retrato) and "The Archipelago" (O Arquipélago), but usually, each part is also split into more parts, since they're huge.

Time and the Wind tells the story of Brazil and, more interestingly, my state, through the several generations of the Terra and Cambará families, from the 1850's to 1950's (average, they don't talk about years when the story begins), we follow the story of Ana Terra, a strogn woman, who's the perfect stereotype of women who lives here (and her descendants) and Capitão Rodrigo (Captain Rodrigo) who is the stereotype of men here (and marries one of Ana Terra's descendants), but's also an accurate image of the men who lived during those times with several wars and struggles.

Wikipedia says his books were translated into several languages, including English. I'm not 100% sure that'll be the title, but search for Time and the Wind, you will see more about Brazil and how some people and some states have a completelly different history and image than any other here.