Nuno Galopim presents novel by Rafael Gallo

23 Apr 2024

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Rebentar (Burst), the 2016 winner of the São Paulo Prize for Literature, arrived in Portugal via Porto Editora in 2023 and will be presented for the first time in the country. Journalist, critic and writer Nuno Galopim will be in conversation with the author, Rafael Gallo, in a celebration of World Book Day, on 23 April, at 7 pm.

«A missing child is a child who dies every day. Not even in the cruellest mythologies is there a tragedy of equivalent magnitude; no god has had to endure such pain. Each night, as darkness falls, it crashes down upon the parents with the renewed weight of the news: you have lost your child and they are out there in that darkness, unprotected. This silent message impregnates the walls of the house, the gaps between the tiles, the hands of the clocks and the pages of the calendars, the family portraits, the floor upon which one treads.»

In Rebentar, Rafael Gallo's voice, ever sharp, follows a mother's suffering — at times in a deafening scream, constant as the waves breaking against the jetty where Ângela tries to drown her pain, at other times in a scream as silent as the act of waiting.

 

Rafael Gallo

He was born in São Paulo, Brazil, where he published the novel Rebentar (2015), winner of the São Paulo Prize for Literature, and Réveillon e outros dias (2012), a short story collection that won the Sesc Prize for Literature. He also has numerous texts in anthologies and collections, including publications in countries such as France, the United States, Cuba, Ecuador and Mozambique. With Dor fantasma, he was awarded the 2022 José Saramago Literary Prize.

 

Information

23 April 2024, at 7 pm
Rua de Santa Catarina 9, Lisbon