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Marçal
Aquino Brazil
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Marçal Aquino, born in Amparo in the
State of São Paulo in 1958, is a journalist, author of screenplays, as well as
children’s books, novels and short stories, for which he received several
prizes. Since the mid-90s, he has been working closely with the director Beto
Brant, who adapted three of his works for cinema. O invasor
was shown at the film festival in Berlin and received the Prize for the best Latin-American production at the Sundance
Festival in the US.
Alaor and Ivan, the latter being the first person
narrator of the psychothriller O invasor (“The Invador”),
are shareholders of a construction firm in São Paulo, which they established
years ago with their fellow student Estevão. One day, an old friend from Brasília
proposes an illegal deal. Estevão, the principal shareholder, fears the
uncovering of the fraud and threatens to dissolve the firm, should the others
take on the offer. Ivan and Alaor decide to have him removed by hit man Anísio.
However, Anísio not only kills Estevão, but also his wife and has no intention
of disappearing from the lives of his clients. Ivan cannot handle the pressure
much longer and finally sees himself confronted with a conspiracy, in which
Alaor, Anísio and even his girlfriend Paula are involved in.
In his novel Cabeça à
prêmio (“Bounty”), Marçal Aquino once more steps into a world of
lawlessness and brutality. Brito and Albano work as hired killers for the
brothers Abílio and Mirão Menezes, who are involved in the drug business. For
days Brito and Albano have been in a small village now,waiting
for their victim, a trade unionist. In flashbacks, the author tells the story
of the unhappy relationship between Brito and the high-class prostitute
Marlene. At the same time a parallel plot develops from the love story between
Dênis and Elaine, the first being the pilot of the brothers Menezes and the
latter Mirão’s daughter. For fear of Mirão, the two
decide to flee. These non linear plots of the novel are interwoven in a
masterly fashion by Marçal Aquino, who surprises with an unexpected end of this
gripping and speedily told story.
In his third novel Eu receberia as piores notícias dos seus lindos lábios (“I Would Read the Most
Terrible News from your Beautiful Lips”) Aquino, who has also made a name for
himself as an author of crime novels, tells the passionate love story between
the narrator Cauby, a roughly forty-year-old photographer, and the young and
mysterious Lavinia. A grant for a photo report about prostitutes leads him to
the dreary gold mining city in the North of Brazil. He soon encounters the
growing tension between the gold diggers and the mining companies and decides
to stay for a while. His relationship to Lavinia proves a little tricky due to
her extremely impulsive personality. At times she is scared and vulnerable; at
others she acts the young seductive woman he enjoys uninhibited sex with.
Besides, she is married to the older and popular television priest of an
evangelical church. Cauby therefore decides to leave Lavinia. Things, however,
don’t go according to plan and his sinister premonitions become reality.
With very subtle irony
Aquino entertainingly tells of the touching love between Cauby and Lavinia
against the backdrop of the political and social conflicts of the gold diggers
city. The diverse layers of narrative are artfully linked and provide for
lasting suspense.
A speedy novel written in a
captivating laconic style.
Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung
Four great features characterise his
style: a lack of pretentiousness, clarity, descriptive rigour and no
consideration whatever for irrelevant gossip. The dialogue, rapid and copious,
is a model of brilliance.
Rodrigo Breunig, Isto É
Marçal
Aquino’s writing achieves a level of excellence where crime literature leaves
off being about crime and becomes literature tout court.
José Geraldo
Couto
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
O invasor, São
Paulo: Geração Editorial 2002, Companhia das Letras 2011, 122 p.
Film directed by Beto Brant
Portugal:
Palavra 2005
Cabeça a prêmio,
São Paulo: Cosac & Naify 2003, 189 p.
Film
rights sold
Eu receberia as piores notícias dos seus
lindos lábios, Companhia das Letras: São Paulo 2005, 229 p.
(English
sample translation available)
Portugal:
palava 2006 ● Germany: Büchergilde
(Collection by Ilija Trojanow) 2009
Como se o mundo fosse um bom lugar, São Paulo: Companhia as Letras, to be published in 2011
Stories:
As fomes de setembro, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade
1991, 86 p.
Miss Danúbio, São Paulo:
Editora Página Aberta 1994, 124 p.
O amor e outros objectos pontiagudos, São Paulo: Geração Editorial 1999, 137 p.
Faroestes, São Paulo:
Editora Ciência do Acidente 2001, 108 p.
Famílias terrivelmente felizes,
São Paulo: Cosac & Naify 2003, 232 p.
Os matadores,
(published in Miss Danúbio)
Made into a film titled “Matadores” in 1997
Participation in anthologies:
Brasilien berättar: Ljud av steg,
Stockholm: Tranan 2011