Leticia Wierzchowski Brazil

© Marcelo Pires

Leticia Wierzchowski is among the best contemporary Brazilian authors. Born in Porto Alegre in 1972, she has over ten books to her credit. They include the hugely successful novel A casa das sete mulheres, translated into six languages and adapted into a TV series aired in twenty-five countries. Leticia Wierzchowski also used her Polish origins as inspiration for the acclaimed book of children's tales O dragão de Wawel e outras lendas polonesas (“The Wawel Dragon and Other Polish Tales”). Her books have sold more than 170,000 copies in Brazil.

For her novel A casa das sete mulheres (“The House of the Seven Women”) the famous uprising 'Guerra dos Farrapos' in southern Brazil in the middle of the 19th century provided the historical setting. It was instigated by large land-owners protesting against the imperial central government in Rio and demanding the independence of southern Brazil. Their leader was Bento Gonçalves. In the course of the uprising the progressive forces argued for the declaration of a republic and the abolition of slavery (only half a century later it would be prohibited in Brazil). Many black slaves and foreign revolutionaries, including the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, fought on the side of the insurgents.

Before the war begins Bento Gonçalves brings the women in his family to safety on the estate of his sister, the Estancia da Barra. Against the backdrop of the military events, which were to last for ten years and end with the defeat of the insurgents, the life of these women is described, their fears, the covert or overt love-affairs of the young girls, the worries of the married women about their husbands and sons involved in the fighting.

The novel centres around the young Manuela, who is unhappily in love with Garibaldi. Her diary entries run like a red thread through the whole story. Here, history is narrated from the viewpoint of women. In their everyday life the Virgin Mary comes to their aid, though they are also able to help themselves thanks to their prophetic powers. In the home, it is they who are the protagonists, supervising the work of the slaves and devoting their time to handicrafts and reading, as they await news from the front.

The author has skilfully interwoven fact and fiction in this novel and produced a family saga which is reminiscent of the world of Gone with the Wind. Here too, the idyll of a society untouched by progressive ideas is destroyed in the turmoil of a long war. With a hint of magical realism, the novel entrenches the moving fates of these women in the wide landscape of the southern Brazilian pampa and depicts the battles in an unsuccessful uprising.

A Casa das Sete Mulheres is one of those historical novels where our fascination for the story – and the way we constantly re-assess it as we read – is reinforced by the irresistible art of a well-constructed novel.

Luis Fernando Veríssimo, writer

The novel deals with all the wars and their consequences, both personal and collective. Above all, what is touching is the human proximity of the narratedfacts.

Jornal O GLOBO

Uma ponte para Terebin (“A Bridge to Terebin”) is based on the life of the author’s grandfather, Jan Wierzchowski, who emigrated to Brazil as a young Polish man in 1936, three years before Poland’s invasion by the nazis. After discovering the letters sent to Jan by the family he had left behind, Leticia decided to retrace her grandfather’s steps and examine the price we sometimes pay for our freedom. In the poetic, moving style that has become her trademark, the author recounts Jan’s one-way journey. She observes both the joy and the sorrow he encountered, when the dream of a brand new life was mixed with the pain of leaving behind his country and his relatives, many of whom he would never see again. Unable to return to Poland for tweny-eight years – even though he fought in the war for his country’s liberation – Jan led a fascinating, brave existence, and his grand-daughter Leticia does honour to this life in her splendid novel. The author was also inspired by the story of her relatives who stayed in Poland during the somber years of German occupation.

Drawing on emotions that lie deep within her, Leticia wrote Um Farol no Pampa (“Headlight on the pampas”), an irresistible sequel to the novel A Casa das Sete Mulheres. In this story Leticia Wierzchowski deals with the astonishing events that led the Brazilian Empire into war with Paraguay. Um Farol no Pampa is, above all, an unforgettable epic of love, conflict, tragedy, and the obscure logic of human passion. Far removed from the isolated house engulfed by the tide of war, Leticia’s characters now come face to face with their own inner solitude. Manuela, Dona Antônia, Caetana, Dona Ana, Mariana, Perpétua – all come alive again and establish themselves as permanent features of the reader’s imagination.

Leticia Wierzchowski is part of a new generation of Brazilian authors who are capable of delivering their message with competence, courage and emotion.

Moacyr Scliar, writer

O pintor que escrevia. Amor e pecado (“The Painter who Wrote. Love and Sin”) tells the story of the passionate but forbidden love between the Italian painter Marco Belucci and his wife Amapola. The two of them had emigrated to the South of Brazil shortly after the outbreak of World War II with Amapola's mother Antônia Maestro. The novel begins in 1958, as Marco, recently more and more melancholy in awareness of his sin, throws himself out of his studio window. The reader does not find out the reason until the end of the novel: Amapola was his sister.

Twenty years later, his widow asks the São Paulo art dealer Augusto Seara to come out to her country home to catalogue her husband's paintings stored there for sale. Seara is very enthusiastic, as the few pictures by Belucci that were shown in public during his lifetime imply a great talent. Arrived on the estate, Seara is immediately captured by the atmosphere of faded decadence and dark secrets. Donna Antônia, so they say, returned to Italy after Belucci's death and went insane. When the artist unpacks the first pictures, he notices there is writing all over the backs of the canvas. The painter kept a kind of diary, the words always linked to the pictures themselves. Piece by piece, Seara uncovers the most important events in Belucci's life, gradually tracing his secret: his mother gave him Amapola as a wife so that her secret dream would come true the birth of a perfect creature, her grandson. Out of passion for Amapola, Marco complied with the pact.

The page-turner of a novel is classically written, entertaining and exciting the reader simply has to find out the dreadful secret. The descriptions and scenes are extremely vivid and impressive; one can easily imagine a wonderful film of the book.

As waves flood entire towns along the Brazilian coast, Marcus attempts to bring his heavily pregnant granddaughter Débora to safety. They set off for a house he owns inland, on the edge of a canyon in the mountains of the Aparados da Serra. The new surroundings put their difficult relationship to the test, confronting them with their innermost conflicts. Both of them have to learn to give in so as to survive in a world on the brink of collapse, in which looting and brutal violence are now everyday occurrences. In Leticia Wierzchowski’s new novel Os Aparados, the effects of climate change take their toll. Storms, floods and melting ice caps come together into a global scenario in which people try to find out what they have to save – and what they have to give up.

Leticia conjures up one surprise after another, so her readers had better be prepared to be surprised yet again. Os Aparados is a dense and skilfully constructed novel.

Luis Fernando Verissimo

Os Getka ("The Getkas"): For ten-year-old Andrzej, every summer means meeting up again with Lylia, the lively green-eyed daughter of the Getkas. But that year, he is dismayed to find out how much their parents, who escaped from Poland during the war, are still tortured by the events. Trying to impress Lylia, Andrzej plans to avenge their parents' suffering. Many years later, he thinks back to this special summer and to Lylia, whom he was never able to conquer nor to forget.

Fantasy and reality, past and present merge and are illuminated in this beautiful novel by Leticia Wierzchowski.

Revista Speculum

Represented for Lúcia Riff, Brazil, except French, Portuguese and Spanish

Original editions and rights sold:

Novels:

eu@teamo.com.br, Porto Alegre: LP&M 1999, 85 p.

Prata do tempo, Rio de Janeiro: Record 1999, 2008, 279 p.

O anjo e o resto de nós, Rio de Janeiro: Record 1998, 2001, 221 p.

A casa das sete mulheres, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2002, 511 p.

Germany: Limes, Random House 2009, pb 2010 ● Greece: Enalios 2005 ● Italy: Sonzogno 2004 ● Portugal: Ambar ● Serbia: Evro-Giunti ● Spain: Ediciones B 2004

O pintor que escrevia. Amor e pecado, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2003, 142 p.

Cristal polonês, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2003, 142 p.

Um farol no pampa, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2004, 527 p.

Serbia: Evro-Giunti ● Spain: Ediciones B

Uma ponte para Terebin, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2006, 435 p.

De um grande amor e de uma perdição maior ainda, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2007, 262 p.

Os aparados, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2009, 236 p.

Os Getka, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2010, 176 p.

Picture books:

O dragão de Wawel e outras lendas polonesas, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2005, 95 p.

(with Anna Klacewicz, Ill. by André Neves)

Todas as coisas querem ser outras coisas, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2006, 36 p.

(Ill. by Virgílio Neves)

O menino paciente, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2007, 48 p.

(with Marcelo Pires, Ill. by Virgílio Neves)

Era outra vez um gato xadrez, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2008, 64 p.

(Ill. by Virgílio Neves)

Semente de gente, Rio de Janeiro: Record 2010, 64 p.

(Ill. by Virgílio Neves)