José Luiz Passos Brazil

©Shirakawa

José Luiz Passos, born in Catende, Pernambuco, in 1971, is Associate Professor of Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Cultures at the University of California in LA. He was also director of the Center for Brazilian Studies and has published a number of short stories, essays and plays. Nosso grão mais fino is his first novel.

His debut novel Nosso grão mais fino (“Our Finer Grain”) is a lyrical portrait of family decadence and love gone wrong in twentieth-century Brazil. Ana and Vicente recall the ending of their affair and how it started back on their families’ sugarcane plantation. Together, they try to make sense of Ana’s father’s suicide during a Zeppelin trip, which changed their lives: Ana married Vicente’s uncle and made Vicente her secret lover, thus leaving both men in limbo. But while Vicente prefers the uncanny presence of past possibilities, Ana holds on to real life. The innovative unfolding of the narrative and the dense atmosphere make this novel the new literary discovery from Brazil.

Passos explores the intimacy of the feudal families from the northeast of Brazil with incredible richness. This is great prose.

A Tarde

I can only recommend it.

Milton Hatoum

A matured prose style, bordering on poetry, makes this novel an adventure of language and sensibility.

Literary supplement of Pernambuco

This work represents a truly modern novel within Brazilian literature.

Jornal do Brasil

A beautiful novel, enveloped in memory and the scent of sugar.

Pepetela

A daring novel in its attempt at unpeeling the identity game of a ‘regional’ self.

Jornal do Commércio, Recife

The sugarcane landscape that serves as a background to the story of love and family decadence created by Passos is haunted with ruins.

Jerônimo Teixeira, Veja

Novels:

Nosso grão mais fino

Rio de Janeiro: Alfaguara 2009, 157 p.

English sample translation available

O sonâmbulo amador,

Rio de Janeiro: Alfaguara, forthcoming

Excerpt in Magazine Granta (Brazilian edition), forthcoming in November 2011

Stories (selection):

Nova continuidade dos parques

Berkeley: University of California (Lucero: A Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies) 1998

Laszlo, Marisa e meu pai

Berkeley: University of California (Lucero: A Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies) 2006

Averrós

São Paulo: Revista É 2009

Theatre (selection):

Carmelo’s War, 79 p.

In English competitively selected for a staged reading at the 32nd Comparative Drama Conference, Los Angeles 2008

Non-fiction (selection):

Ruínas de linhas puras: quatro ensaios em torno a Macunaíma

São Paulo: Annablume Editora 1998, 134 p.

Machado de Assis’ Library: Drama and Deception in the Rise of Brazilian Realism

Berkeley: University of California 1999, 32 p.

Machado de Assis, o romance com pessoas

São Paulo: Nankin/Edusp, University of São Paulo Press 2007, 296 p.