O som do rugido da onça
The Sound of a Roaring Jaguar
by Micheliny Verunschk
Companhia das Letras, 2021
168 pages
14×21 cm
In this lyrical novel, Micheliny Verunschk exposes the story of two native children of the Amazon forest in XIX Brazil, kidnapped and brought to Europe by two German explorers.
In 1817, Spix and Martius disembarked in Brazil with the mission of registering their impressions about the country. Three years and ten thousand kilometers later, the explorers went back to Munich bringing with them not only a detailed travel report, but also two native kids, who will die shortly after reaching the European soil.
In her fifth novel, Micheliny Verunschk builds a powerful narration putting aside the hegemonic historiography of the time and bringing light on the main characters of this story, two children – here called Iñe-e and Juri – torn away from their native land. The plot is intertwined with contemporary Brazil, where we meet Josefa, a young girl that sees a picture of the two kids during an exhibition and understands her lack of knowledge on the matter.
This is a book without comparison in Brazil’s contemporary literature, a novel facing delicate themes such as memory, colonialism, identity and belonging.
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«A novel that extends the limits of the literary art by giving voice to memory, anthropology and all the best that literature has to offer.»
Itamar Vieira Junior, Jabuti Prize 2020
«Magical words, able to create worlds. A great read.»
Ailton Krenak, leader of the Brazilian native movement, environmentalist and writer
What the author says about her work on the novel:
«I believe that literature is, par excellence, the space to exercise alterity. Fiction has the power to put us in other people’s place in a radical way.»
«So, when I put forward these different voices in The Sound of the Jaguar’s Roar, it’s because I believe that’s how the world is. Similarly, I believe different timelines cross each other, charge each other, are in constant friction.»
«I had to conduct extensive research, but not only in a traditional sense. I had to subvert the notion of historical research. So I moved towards native narrators, listening to different native peoples.I had to enter another world, another logic and another understanding of life, not the framework in which we are inserted, which is the Western, rational logic.»
Micheliny Verunschk, author of The Sound of the Jaguar’s Roar
Winner of the Jabuti Prize 2022
Third place at the Oceanos Prize 2022
Rights sold: The Netherlands
Rights available: All other countries
Represented in collaboration with MTS Agência
Micheliny Verunschk (Recife, 1972) is a Brazilian writer and poet. She completed a master in Literary Criticism at the Pontifical University of São Paulo and a PhD in Communication and Semiotic at the same university. She published the books of poems Geografia Íntima do Deserto (Landy 2003), O Observador e o Nada (Edições Bagaço, 2003) and A Cartografia da Noite (Lumme Editor, 2010), and the novels nossa Teresa (Editora Patuá 2014) and the three novels of her Trilógia infernal (Editora Patuá 2020), a trilogy set during the Brazilian dictatorship. Her fifth novel, O Som do Rugido da Onça, won the Jabuti Prize 2022.
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