Project Description

Jabuti Prize 2001Patrícia Melo

Brazil

Patrícia Melo was born in 1962 and is a highly regarded novelist, playwright and scriptwriter. She has been awarded a number of internationally renowned prizes, including the Jabuti Prize 2001, the German LiBeraturpreis 2013 and the German Crime Award 1998 and 2014, and she was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Time Magazine included her among the Fifty Latin American Leaders of the New Millenium. In 2023 THE SIMPLE ART OF KILLING A WOMAN was nominated for the Prix Fémina in the category Best Foreign Novel.

Patrícia Melo© Adriano Heitmann

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Less Than One

In her new novel Less Than One (“Menos que Um”), Patrícia Melo talks about the daily battles for survival of a group of characters – street vendors, parking attendants, unemployed people, drunks, thieves, and scavengers; people who all share the fact that, by force of circumstances, they have to live on the streets.
“We are people”, shouts Chilves, a young black man, semi-literate, who grew up in a garbage dump and walks twenty kilometres every day, collecting paper, glass and cans to survive. His dream, as a Humble Professor of Truth, is to promote the Revolution. Jessica, fourteen, a crack user in search of her mother, doesn’t quite understand Chilves’ political message but she likes him, and to Chilves she is a goddess. The girl becomes pregnant, so the young couple’s main goal becomes finding a home for their soon-to-be-born child, but also for their street companions. Among them is Glenda, with sharp claws and jaguar tights, who wants to be happy as Glenda, and not as Weverton, her baptismal name. There is Zélia, a madwoman who lives in the cemetery of Piedade, dreaming of piercing the eyes of her son’s murderer. This son, the reader will learn, is Jessica’s brother. The reader will also learn that on the street, such an inhospitable place, friendships exist just like anywhere else, and synergies work. With everyone’s collaboration, fighting against real estate speculators, this homeless community manages to occupy an abandoned building and create a solidarity project.
This novel by Patrícia Melo, in which literature and poetry intertwine the destinies of the forgotten and abandoned of the big city, tries to answer the most human question of all: What is there when what there is is less than one? The answer that emerges from Less Than One is one only: Beneath the dirt, the vice, the hunger, the cold, the invisibility, the violence, the fear, and the loneliness, these men, women and children are people who also dream, or have once dreamed. Patrícia Melo’s fiction mercilessly shows the inequality and social violence of contemporary Brazilian society, but allows a way out for its protagonists, who get a place to live together and continue dreaming.

Quotes

Less Than One

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The Simple Art of Killing a Woman

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman  (“Mulheres Empilhadas”) discusses in harsh and humorous language the urgent issue of violence against women in Brazil. The book tells the story of a young lawyer from São Paulo who, eager to escape an abusive relationship, agrees to go to Acre, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest to cover a series of trials. While following the numerous cases of women murdered by their husbands, boyfriends or relatives, the young lawyer discovers the beauty of the forest and the dazzling and tragic reality of indigenous life. At the same time, while taking part in rituals involving ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink used for mystical purposes, she rediscovers the memory of her own personal tragedy: having witnessed, at the age of four, her father kill her mother.
Patrícia Melo creates a mosaic of a Brazil that endorses the killing of women and the mass imprisonment of black people, while turning a blind eye to the crimes of the white upper and middle classes.

Quotes

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman

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Gog Magog

In the Bible, Gog Magog stands for the enemy of the chosen people, in the revelations of St John, even for the Antichrist. In Patrícia Melo’s novel the name stands for the monster in each one of us. The narrator of this domestic drama with apocalyptic dimensions is an ordinary citizen, fifty-four years old, a biology teacher at an evening school, and living with his wife Marta in São Paulo. His profession bores him, his marriage has become routine. Only the new neighbour Ygor stirs his blood: because he makes so much noise, he hates him with all his heart and even wishes him dead.

One day, by chance, he gets the keys to Ygor’s apartment. He enjoys the feeling of power and scrambles around until his neighbour, whom he calls Mister Upsilon, returns unexpectedly. Mister Upsilon falls and, in the fighting that ensues, dies. The narrator now has a problem: To hide the business about the key, he has to make the corpse disappear. But this is not so easy. He dismembers it and drives out with the luggage compartment of his car full of body parts, but where there was previously open country there are now family homes, and finally he returns to his apartment with the plastic bags. For a few days he sits there with the bags until the police come and pick him up. Here his life takes an unexpected turn: prison is like a cure for him, he finds new meaning in life by learning to do useful things like building water cocks. When the court finds him guilty, the public takes interest, and along with the Sunday visits of his ex-wife, a new female admirer starts visiting him.

With her frenetic rhythm, her acidic language, ironic and full of humour, Patrícia Melo penetrates the mind of a man who is stunned by the world around him and incapable of living with the noise of contemporary life, and builds a plot around the effects that noise and silence are capable of producing on human behaviour.

Quotes

Gog Magog

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Ghost Light

In her long-awaited new novel, Ghost Light (“Fogo-Fátuo”), Patrícia Melo tells a gripping crime story. Azucena Gobbi, one of the few upright detectives in São Paulo, is going through a bad patch: Getting home one day, she catches her husband sleeping with her sister. At the same time she is investigating the murder of the dashing telenovela star Fábbio Cássio. The main suspect, his beautiful girlfriend Cayanne, does not seem very affected by his death, as she is too busy struggling to become a celebrity herself. While Azucena tries to get her private life under control, her investigations unexpectedly lead her to a paedophile ring a place of no return, it seems… Ostensibly entertaining, this artfully constructed novel once again shows Patrícia Melos skill at dismantling Brazilian society and uncovering not only the killer, but also the lies some lives are built on.

Quotes

Ghost Light

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The Body Snatcher

The Body Snatcher (“Ladrão de Cadáveres”) is set in the Pantanal, the vast untamed Brazilian lowlands bordering Bolivia. One bright Sunday, alone on the banks of the Paraguay River, the narrator witnesses a fatal crash of a small plane. He finds a kilo of cocaine in the pilot’s backpack. When the crash is located several days later but the pilot’s body is missing, a macabre and dangerous scheme is hatched… Ladrão de cadáveres is a mesmerising mix of conspiracy, sex, betrayal of the living and desecration of the dead.

Quotes

The Body Snatcher

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Writing in the Dark

In Writing in the Dark (“Escrevendo no Escuro”), Patrícia Melo brings to her first collection of short stories the same critical eye for detail and the same psychological insight that characterise her novels. These are stories that intrigue, disquiet, and sometimes puzzle, displaying a universality that addresses many of the anxieties and demons that besiege men and women in the twenty-first century.

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Awards

Deutscher Krimi-Preis 2014 – best foreign work (International Thrillers), Germany

LiBeraturpreis 2013, Germany

Prêmio Jabuti 2001, Brazil

Deutscher Krimi-Preis 1998 – best foreign work (International Thrillers), Germany

Prix Deux Océans 1996, Biarritz, France

Nominated for the Prix Fémina 1996, France

RIGHTS

NOVELS
Less Than One (“Menos que Um”)
São Paulo: LeYa 2022, 366 p.
Shortlisted for the Jabuti Prize 2023
Semi-Finalist of Jabuti Prize 2023
Germany: Unionsverlag 2024 · France: Buchet Chastel 

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman (“Mulheres Empilhadas”)
Rio de Janeiro: Leya 2019, 288 p.
INDIES Editor’s Choice Prize for Fiction 2023
Prix l’Héroïne Madame Figaro 2024
Longlist Prix des libraires du Québec 2024
Nominated for the Prix Fémina 2023
Over 15,000 copies sold
Included in the Words Without Borders Watchlist December 2023
Egypt: Al Arabi 2022 · France: Buchet Chastel 2023 · Germany: Unionsverlag 2021, pb 2022 · Italy: Bompiani 2023 · Mexico: Tusquets · Poland: Wiele Kropek · Spain: Rinoceronte (Galician rights) · UK: The Indigo Press 2024 · USA: Restless Books 2023

Gog Magog
Rio de Janeiro: Rocco 2017, 174 p.
On the Crime Leaderboard (KrimiBestenListe) of FAZ and Deutschlandsradio Kultur for several months.
Film rights under option
English sample translation available
Chile: Tajamar 2018 (Latin American rights) · France: Actes Sud 2021 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 2018, Unionsverlag 2022 · Kuwait: Alsurra 2019 · Spain: Escrituras Verticales 2018

Ghost Light (“Fogo-Fátuo”)
Rio de Janeiro: Rocco 2014, 304 p.
Among TOP 20 of Crime Novel 2017, Le Monde
English sample translation available
France: Actes Sud 2017 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 2017; pb Unionsverlag 2021 · Spain: Escrituras Verticales

The Body Snatcher (“Ladrão de Cadáveres”)
Rio de Janeiro: Rocco 2010, 208 p.
German Crime Fiction Award 2014
LiBeraturpreis 2013
Denmark: Anton & Ludwig 2016 · Egypt: Al Arabi 2016 · France: Actes Sud 2012 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 2012; pb Heyne 2014; pb Unionsverlag 2023 · Japan: Hayakawa 2016 · Mexico: Océano (Spanish rights for America) 2015 · Portugal: Quetzal 2012 · UK: Bitter Lemon 2015

Jonas, o Copromanta
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 2008, Rocco 2010, 173 p.
English sample translation available
Portugal: Campo das Letras 2009

Lost World (“Mundo Perdido”)
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 2006, Rocco 2010, 200 p.
France: Actes Sud 2008 · Portugal: Campo das Letras 2006 · UK: Bloomsbury 2010

Black Waltz (“Valsa Negra”)
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 2003, 241 p.
France: Actes Sud 2005  · Germany: Droemer Knaur 2005 · Portugal: Campo das Letras 2004 · UK: Bloomsbury 2004

Inferno
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 2000, 367 p.
Jabuti Prize 2001
France: Actes Sud 2001 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 2003 · Greece: Metaichmio 2003 · Portugal: Campo das Letras 2001 · Romania: Univers · Spain: Grijalbo Mondadori (Lumen) 2003, pb 2005 · Turkey: Agora Kultur 2003 (avail.) · UK: Bloomsbury 2002

In Praise of Lies (“Elogio da Mentira”)
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 1998, 187 p.
France: Actes Sud, 2000, pb Babel 2001 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 1999, Büchergilde Gutenberg 2000, pb Knaur 2003, 2007, Wagenbach 2012 · Italy: Fanucci 1999; 2002 · The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek 1999 · Romania: Univers 2014 · Spain: Grijalbo Mondadori 2000 · Sweden: Bonniers 2000, pb 2001 · Taiwan: Crown · UK: Bloomsbury 1998 · USA: The Ecco Press 1998

The Killer (“O Matador”)
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 1995, 204 p.
German Crime Fiction Award 1998
Film directed by José Henrique Fonseca, Conspiração Filmes, released in 2003
France: Albin Michel 1996 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 1997; pb dtv 1999, radio play (SWR) 1999 · Italy: Feltrinelli 1996, pb 1998 · The Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek 1997 · Norway: Aschehoug 1998, Publizm (audio book and eBook rights) · Portugal: Campo das Letras · Romania: Univers 2014 · Russia: Atticus 2005; Arkadia · Spain: Ediciones B 1997 · UK: Bloomsbury 1997 · USA: The Ecco Press 1997

Acqua Toffana
São Paulo: Companhia das Letras 1994, Rocco 2009, 133 p.
TV Rights sold to Zola Films LTDA.
English sample translation available
France: Actes Sud 2003 · Germany: Klett-Cotta 2002 · Italy: IBIS 2004 · Portugal: Campo das Letras 2002; Quetzal 2013

SHORT STORIES
Writing in the Dark (“Escrevendo no Escuro”)
Rio de Janeiro: Rocco 2011, 192 p.

Sindróme do Pânico (in Writing in the Dark)
USA: Amazon Crossing