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Hemley Boum
Jeferson Ténorio
Brazil
Author photo: Avesso Da Pele Macedo
Jeferson was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1977. Based in Porto Alegre, he holds a PhD in literary theory from PUC-RS. He was a columnist for the newspapers Zero Hora and Uol/Folha de São Paulo until April 2023 and a visiting professor of literature at Brown University, USA. He has had texts adapted for the theater and short stories translated into English and Spanish. He is the author of Estela sem Deus (2018) and O avesso da pele (2020, The Dark Side of Skin), which won the 2021 Jabuti Prize for the Best Novel published in Brazil. The Dark Side of Skin also won the PEN Translates Award in the UK.
What you can't miss:
Life under Brazil's brutal "cordial racism" comes painfully alive in this novel of fathers and sons. It's an archaeology of affections, but also of life in southern Brazil, where being black on the streets of Porto Alegre manifests violences large and small. Jeferson Tenório takes on fathers and sons, Shakespeare and Cervantes, and the inescapable bonds and burdens of family and history in one delicately rendered, painfully precise account of loved ones lost and found.
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