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Fernando Molica Brazil
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Fernando
Molica, born in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, has worked as a journalist for several
renowned newspapers like Folha de S.Paulo and O Globo, and is
writing a daily column in the newspaper O Dia.
In Fernando
Molica's latest literary accomplishment O
inventário de Julio Reis ("The Inventory of Julio Reis"), a man
tries to make his musical breakthrough in turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, a
task that his son is to take up just as unavailingly after him. Telling the
story of his own grandfather and great-grandfather, Molica captivates the
reader not only with their moving experiences but also with the portrait of a
society that keeps reinventing itself.
Bandeira negra, amor ("Black Flag, Love") tells a haunting story
of secrecy, love and racism set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The lawyer
Fred campaigns for the rights of Blacks while Beatriz is a successful press
officer for the military police. As they come from adversary camps and different
races, their love must remain a secret. Then three black youths are found dead
- and members of the military police are the main suspects…
Bandeira Negra
is not just a good crime story. It is the geography of a tense, violent Rio de
Janeiro, ever ready to explode. It is a portrait, at once critical and
affectionate, of a tentacular city, home to the screams, the dreams and the
frustrations of the thousands of the marginalised.
Globo
Notícias do
Mirandão (“News from Mirandão”) is an intelligently written crime
story and a political farce, set in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. The lives of
the favela inhabitants are marked by crime, drug dealing and poverty. A group
of radical left-wing students plan a revolution à la Che Guevara and the
“Conexão Revolucionária” (Revolutionary Association) in fact manages to
mobilise the population of Mirandão. To achieve this, the revolutionaries enter
into a daring alliance with the favela's drug bosses. Numerous successes are
achieved, also thanks to the financial support of a foreign aid agency.
Everyone seems to be profiting from the new state of affairs. Even outside the
favela notice is taken of the fact that crime is on the decline. An ambitious
journalist in search of a front-page story, becomes
curious. But whilst thinking he has uncovered a conspiracy, someone else has
long since taken matters into his own hands.
The short
chapters shed a brief light on the different figures and socio-cultural strata
of Brazilian society and help to accelerate the pace of the novel. Fernando
Molica tells a fictional but credible and, to the very last page, exciting
story in which he neither idealises nor simplifies. The reader is well aware
that the favela has a law of its own.
Molica
has written a sensitive, exciting portrait of everyday insanity, stripped of
all illusions.
Stuttgarter Zeitung
Please also visit the author’s website:
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
Notícas do Mirandão
Rio de Janeiro: Récord 2002, 220 p.
French translation
available
Germany: Nautilus 2006
O homem que morreu três vezes
Rio de Janeiro: Récord 2003, 328 p.
Bandeira negra, amor
Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, 2005, 217 p.
German translation available
O ponto da partida
Rio de Janeiro: Record 2008, 189 p.
O inventário de Julio Reis
Rio de Janeiro: Record, forthcoming
For young readers:
O misterioso craque da Vila Belmira
Rio de Janeiro: Rocco 2010, 88
p.
Short stories in anthologies:
10 Cariocas
Córdoba/Argentina: Ferreyra Editor 2009
(Ed. by Federico Lavezzo)
Dicionário Amoroso da Língua Portuguesa
Lisbon: Casa da Palvra 2009
(Ed. by Marcelo Moutinho)