Two of Brazil’s best young novelists discuss their work with Cambridge academics and students

They took part in events organised by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and supported by the Centre of Latin American Studies, to mark the launch of Granta magazine’s special issue dedicated to “The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists”.

Novelist and translator Tatiana Salem Levy (b. 1979) was born in Lisbon and now lives in Rio de Janeiro. Her debut novel, A chave de casa (The House Key, 2007), won the São Paulo Prize for Literature and was a finalist for the prestigious Jabuti award.

Michel Laub (b. 1973), a journalist and the author of five novels, was born in Porto Alegre and currently lives in São Paulo. His latest book, Diário da Queda (Diary of the Fall, 2011), was the winner of various national awards and will be published in the UK next year.

In the first of the afternoon’s events, Levy and Laub were joined by Granta’s deputy editor, Ellah Allfrey, and by translator Nick Caistor, in a two-hour discussion involving academics and students with an interest in Brazilian culture and Lusophone literature.

Led by fourth-year PhD students Matt Carless and Rachel Brown (both of whom recently returned from a year spent at the University of São Paulo), the session touched on topics such as the role of the writer in contemporary Brazil, the lack of a Brazilian readership for modern fiction, and the constant struggle against clichéd views of what it means to be Brazilian.

Allfrey added that her first job, as editor, was to revise her own preconceptions about Brazilian fiction –in a country where most of the population lives in large cities it is wrong to expect writers to keep describing Brazil as a tropical paradise or rural idyll. Caistor, who has translated over thirty novels from Spanish and Portuguese, described the process of translation as “cultural bridge-building”.

The seminar was followed by a public reading at Waterstones, in the course of which the writers discussed their stories from the special issue of Granta: Levy read ‘Blazing Sun’, about a reluctant returnee to Rio de Janeiro, while Laub read ‘Animals’, in which the seemingly accidental death of a boy’s pet hides a deeper sense of loss.

Laub and Levy responded to questions from the audience about the relationship between fiction and autobiography, and about their preference for fragmented writing styles.

Cambridge’s invitation to Levy and Laub is yet another sign of the university’s heightened awareness of, and deep interest in, Brazilian culture and language.

From 2014 the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages will host a teaching post in Brazilian Studies.

Meanwhile, responding to student and staff demand, the University’s Language Centre has recently launched beginners’ and intermediate courses in Brazilian Portuguese.