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Santiago Nazarian Brazil
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Santiago Nazarian was born in São Paulo in 1977 and has become an insider's
tip on the Brazilian literary scene. He studied literature and then worked in
various professions. In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the 39 highest profile Latin American
writers under the age of 39.
This
is not entertainment. This is not here to entertain you. A
pen on paper. A knife in the belly. Sex between the thighs. Love in the heart. Each word costs
as much to me as to you, at least it should. I pierce your eyes. I open your
stomach. I fill every space, in white and red. Each chapter of this
unsettling book, A morte sem nome (“Death without a
Name”), ends with a suicide attempt by the first-person narrator, Lorena. And
each new chapter begins with her obsessive longing to put an end to her life.
Like in a delirium, words continually seep out of her like the blood from her
veins. I too trickle, slip, overflow, spill everywhere. I need wine-glasses
and table-napkins to meet my desires. I require a
floor cloth to wipe my life clean. Like a moth, I am drawn to the flame. Not
all the suicide attempts are real; fantasy and reality interweave. The same
images recur, images of an unhappy, hopeless young woman in her mid-thirties in
search of love and recognition. Aimless and disgusted by the world, cynical and
reckless, she roams the streets of the hectic metropolis smoking and drinking
to excess. Her lovers are the 14-year-old Davi, the trader Mako and the waiter
Miguel. Occasional meetings with her father, a mattress salesman, repeatedly
disappoint her. The book’s clipped sentences are linked associatively.
Everything seems to blend. Snatches of memories return telling us about her
childhood in the country in her uncle’s family where she is tolerated but
scarcely given any notice
A
morte sem nome is a radically unsentimental novel. Santiago
Nazarian’s dense poetic language succeeds in combining merciless realism and
nightmarish exaggeration.
Nazarian writes too well, he knows how to create characters and has a fascinating and daring style all his own.
Marcelo Rubens Paiva, FOLHA DE
S. PAULO
If literature is experience, Santiago
demonstrates to the highest degree, what the experience of a written text can
be. The second book from this 27-year-old author is another great surprise, and
will further confirm his considerable talent.
Suêncio Campos de Lucena, RASCUNHO
The main character of Feriado de mim mesmo (“Holidays from
Myself”) lives alone, works from home and has no social contacts. His
relationships are all in the past – even the relationship to his parents, who
have emigrated to Argentina. His leisure time is made
up of trips to the cinema or walks to kill time.
But the narrator does not
see this as a problem. He has no trouble with loneliness, but rather with its
opposite: someone or something has got into his flat and taken possession of
his things and habits. Paranoia? Schizophrenia?
In this thriller, Nazarian explores the frontiers of the individual and speaks
of the inability to communicate in our globalised society – even to communicate
with oneself.
Unlike his character, he has not taken ‘holidays from himself’, nor ceased to ‘believe in himself’. His dense and well-structured prose is ample proof of this.
Márcio Rodrigo, GAZETA MERCANTIL
Mastigando humanos (“Chewing on Humans”) is an entertaining modern-day
fairy tale, the main characters of which are animals living on the urban waste
of a metropolis. The story is told from the point of view of an alligator who
recalls his adventures from the day he left his native forest and migrated to
the big city. As a young rebel, he comes to identify with the decadent and
libertarian charm of the sewer, where he lives alongside junky toads, a stray
dog, street kids, mice and oil drums. Playful and fast-moving, the novel is a
flavourful mix of youth culture and animal existentialism. While the alligator
remembers his rebel youth in the sewer and his journey through university on
his way to becoming a writer, he makes ironic and good-humoured commentaries on
the human species and human society. Mastigando
humanos is a brave novel from a young author who uses the references and
speaks the language of his generation.
In his latest novel O
prédio, o tédio e o menino cego ("The Building, the Boredom and the
blind Child") seven teenage boys live in a tower block by the sea. They
call it the Tower of Pisa, as the building leans to one side. There is no
entrance; the boys have to climb in and out of the windows. The janitor has
been locked into his apartment; there are no rules any more. There is no school
either, as the teachers have been on strike for years. The boys live on pizza
deliveries. They have a common aimlessness, sharing a lack of family and a
state of abandonment.
While the boys are busy
mastering everyday life, the weather is going crazy. It veers between
incredible heat and torrential rain, or a cold snap freezes the sea and the
city. In the end the sea disappears, replaced by a desert. The striking
teachers march through the city, hurling insult at the children. The atmosphere
in the book is always oppressive and absurd, the perspectives for the future
are hazy and dark, but that does not seem to bother the boys. When the
attractive teacher Regina moves into the strange building, she turns the lives
and the cohesion between the boys upside down.
All the boys are bubbling
over with life and bathing in imagination, but their life is at threat. Scenes
of excessive violence are followed by poetic descriptions of the boys'
emotional worlds. Nazarian describes the transition from childhood to
adulthood, awakening great longing for these years of chances and risks.
In his first volume of
short stories, Pornofantasma
(“Pornoghost”), Nazarian
convinces through his wide range of perspectives
and his powerful, vivid and dense language. Taking inspiration from
influences like the Brothers
Grimm and E.T.A. Hoffmann yet giving
the stories his own coinage, the author takes up the recurring topics of adolescence,
awakening sexuality, loss of innocence and death. Nazarian writes with amazing effortlessness
and authenticity.
Nazarian crosses the
imaginative narrative of the fable with his narrative momentum to culminate in
fantastic poetics, sweeping away the literary tradition within current fiction.
Simply beautiful.
O Globo
Nazarian conveys an
inimitable freshness. Bizarre and visceral. If
literature is experience, Santiago demonstrates to the highest degree what the
experience of a written text can be like.
Folha de Pernambuco
Original
editions and rights sold:
Novels:
Olívio, São
Paulo: Talento 2003, 139 p.
A morte sem nome, São Paulo: Planeta 2004, 205 p.
English sample translation available
Portugal:
Palavra 2006
Feriado de mim
mesmo, São Paulo: Planeta 2005, 157 p.
Film rights sold
German
sample translation available
Mastigando
humanos, São Paulo: Nova
Fronteira 2006, 219 p.
Spain: Ambulantes
O prédio, o tédio
e o menino cego, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2009,
344 p.
Stories:
Pornofantasma, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2011, 316 p.
German sample translation available
Participation in anthologies:
In Lusofômica. La nuova narrativa in lingua portoghese: Seis dedos
para contar,
Rome: La Nuova Frontiera 2006
Bogotá 39, Bogotá:Ediciones B 2007, 413 p.
In El futuro no es nuestro: Espinazo de pez, Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia 2009, 272 p.
Selection and foreword by Diego Trelles Paz
Bolivia: La Hoguera ● Brazil: Melhoramentos
● Panama: Fuga ● US: Open Letter Books
Conto do lobisomem, Brazil: Melhoramentos
A mulher barbada, Peru: Factotum