Carlos Nascimento Silva Brazil

© Fernando Rabello

Carlos Nascimento Silva was born in the town of Varginha (Minas Gerais state) in 1937 and was brought up in Rio de Janeiro. He is a specialist in Brazilian Literature. A Casa da Palma ("The Palm House") won prizes from the Brazilian Writers’ Union and the São Paulo Association of Art Critics. When published in Germany, it was a great success with both the critics and the reading public.

Vale da Soledade (“Soledade Valley”) is a novel set against a rural backdrop, where immense coffee plantations lie lost in sleepy expanses, over a long overgrown time that stretches from the beginning of the century to the end of the Second World War. In this half-century of wars and revolutions, a fragile economy, based on a coffee monoculture, faces constant ups and downs as demand fluctuates on the foreign markets, often in times of war; it spends long years subjected to the Vargas dictatorship and to the heavy hand of patriarchal power, exercised from behind the ever-closed doors and blinds of the plantation-owners’ houses. Inside the women’s quarters, the lady of the house, in her slow life of madness and desire, spins fragile webs which often ultimately prove to be more resistant than explosive male action, exercised to the sound of shouts and the whistle of the whip. Many consider Vale da Soledade to be the continuation of the novel A Casa da Palma, published in Germany in 1998.

Desengano (“Disillusion”): The close proximity of their houses during their upbringing forges complex and deep feelings of childhood friendship between a brother and sister, in their early teens, and their neighbour, who is slightly older. When the neighbour reaches the age of 17, the children’s mother, who has been widowed at a young age, feels attracted to the boy, to whom she gives his sexual initiation. Against the wishes of the boy’s parents and her own children, she marries him.

The childhood affection between the boy and the girl continues to grow as they live together, while his wife spends more and more time outside the home due to increasing pressures at work. The reawakening of these childhood feelings eventually brings the mother to a tragic end, and to the marriage of the daughter to her step-father. The intricate web of romantic feelings between the four characters is only untangled on the last page of the book.

The story is set between the end of the war in 1945 and the beginning of the military dictatorship in 1964, depicting a Brazil that is just as immature as the teenage characters in the novel.

Original editions and rights sold:

Novels:

A casa da Palma, Rio de Janeiro: Relume-Dumará 1995, 598 p.

Germany: Europa Verlag 1998, 640 p.

Cabra-cega, Rio de Janeiro: Relume-Dumerá 1998, 249 p.

Prémio Jabuti 1999

English translation available

Vale da Soledade: a natureza do mal, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2003, 271 p.

Desengano, Rio de Janeiro: Agir 2006, 207 p.

Prémio Jabuti 2007

Stories:

A menina de cá, Rio de Janeiro: Agir 2008, 180 p.