Edgard Telles Ribeiro

Edgard Telles Ribeiro

Edgard Telles Ribeiro is an awarded Brazilian writer with over 30 years of career and 14 books published, among novels and short stories volumes. He is also a film critic and professor, and a former diplomat, having spent 15 years working at Brazilian Embassies in the USA. His debut novel, O CRIADO MUDO (I WOULD HAVE LOVED HIM IF I HAD NOT KILLED HIM), was published in Brazil in 1991 and translated in several countries, including in the US by St. Martin’s Press. Among the literary awards he won, there are the Brazilian Academy of Letters Best Novel of the Year Prize for OLHO DE REI (ONE-EYED MAN), in 2006, and the Brazilian Pen Club Best Novel of the Year Prize O PUNHO E A RENDA (HIS OWN MAN), in 2011.

He has novels published in English, Spanish, Dutch and German. Two of his latest novels have been bought by Bellevue Literary Press, from NY. The first, O IMPOSTOR (THE IMPOSTOR), was published in 2022; and the second, JOGO DE ARMAR (THE MAGIC EYE), was published in 2023 and is longlisted for the Jabuti Prize 2024.

THE MAGIC EYE

Stuck in an apartment in Rio de Janeiro where he has lived for many years with his wife, a writer chases the opening sentence of his novel. Despite this somewhat simplistic and claustrophobic scenario, our author weaves the obsessive tale of this search with the care and finesse a sculptor would dedicate to his stone –– albeit a slippery one. For the writer never quite dominates his sentence, which keeps eluding him, as if given a life of its own. More evocative of weaving than writing, the creative process he is a part of blends casually with some of the couples’ daily routines, creating a symmetry reminiscent of building blocks that never quite fit.

Small sequences of unexpected events seem to suggest all is not necessarily clear in the main character’s mind, who nonetheless keeps chasing his sentence all the way to the psychiatric clinic he is eventually interned in. Here the wife, a former journalist and photographer, who until then had barely played second fiddle to him in our eyes, emerges from backstage and gives a new spin to the story, which gains more precise contours that will eventually see the couple embark on a journey unlike any other.

Shortlisted for the Jabuti Prize 2024.

Publication/Status: By Todavia (Brazil) in 2023. [128 pages]

THE IMPOSTOR (O IMPOSTOR)

In THE IMPOSTOR, a man travels with his wife through Italy and recalls a family legend about an uncle who was swallowed by Mt. Vesuvius. Accident or suicide? Preoccupied by this mysterious event, he grapples with the fallibility of memory and the enigma of time. As the characters wonder between worlds and states of mind, Edgard Telles Ribeiro elucidates their situations in surprisingly inventive ways that explore devastating questions of reality, consciousness, and loss. The narrative flow across time and space, from descriptions of the Italian vacation to visits with his therapist, who tries to help him account for the loss time to bonding with his 16-year-old grandson. The protagonist also conjures characters, perhaps in dreams, who seem to know him, even though he hasn’t the faintest idea who they are. Are they impostors? Or is he?

A second novella by Edgard Telles Ribeiro, BLUE BUTTERFLIES OF THE AMAZON, follows THE IMPOSTOR in this volume, and confronts the reader with an altogether different story involving four main characters who rotate as narrators and incorporate somewhat analogous traumas that appear to be synchronistic from several characters’ perspectives. These visions present different ways of placing the storyline within a broader context. Each section reads both as an awakening from the preceding and a return to an evolving sensibility. Foregrounding these inner worlds’ connections with interpersonal and sometimes transpersonal dynamics opens different perspectives into the generation of new life chapters, movements in consciousness that present a pluralistic correspondence to those in the opening novella. A small masterpiece that represents a unique companion to THE IMPOSTOR’s complex intricacies.

Publication/Status: Published by Todavia (Brazil) in 2020 and by Bellevue Literary Press (USA) in 2022. [187 pages]

HIS OWN MAN (O PUNHO E A RENDA)

A charismatic young diplomat in Brazil’s Foreign Ministry, Marcílio Andrade Xavier — to his friends and colleagues, Max — renounces his past ideals and becomes an informer for the military regime after their coup in 1964. Max navigates a shadowy world of betrayal, torture, and assassination without blinking an eye and advances swiftly up the diplomatic ladder. Ironically, once democracy is restored after more than two decades, the enigmatic Max will still manage to thrive. Set against the backdrop of ruthless political maneuvering and dubious business deals with dire consequences, HIS OWN MAN offers a chilling anatomy of ambition and power.

Winner of the Brazilian Pen Club Best Novel of the Year Prize in 2011.

Publication/status: Originally published in Brazil by Record in 2010. Also published by Other Press (USA and Canada) and Alfaguara (Spain). [560 pages]

“A historically grounded and fascinating follow-up to Ribeiro’s first novel…this is yet another successful coup for this journalist and diplomat turned novelist.” — Booklist

“This tale of international intrigue (Graham Greene might provide the best comparison) shows how malleable concepts of left and right, and right and wrong, can be during extended periods of political unrest and military repression. [Ribeiro’s] nuanced and psychologically incisive rendering of survival strategies and personal costs rings true.” — Kirkus (starred review)

ONE-EYED MAN (OLHO DE REI)

Locked in the attic of an old Marseilles hotel, an elderly Jean Lafitte writes a diary of an almost impossible scope, as it deals with a zig-zagging trajectory that will have him escape from certain death in the hands of the Germans in World War II, to a clandestine trip on a wrong ship, which will take him to Brazil (instead of Algeria as originally planned), and then, after three decades of an adventurous life in Rio de Janeiro (as a smuggler, hairdresser, engraver of film posters, butler and then, finally, as the owner of a successful restaurant), on to Ecuador (where he will open a second restaurant) and Guatemala (this time as a small-time cultural attaché), before bringing him back to his native France — where, as an almost total stranger, he will live his final days in near poverty.

Revisiting this life through the miracles provided by literary creation, this unsuspecting Ulysses deals with a myriad of characters, that include three wives (in three countries), three children (in two countries), and an assorted mixture of thieves, smugglers, manicure professionals, film projectionists, aristocrats, all of them part of a landscape that, after fifty years of absence from his native country, keeps changing inexorably.

Winner of the Brazilian Academy of Letters Best Novel of the Year Prize in 2006.

Publication/Status: Published by Record (Brazil) in 2005. Sold to Bellevue Literary Press (USA). [230 pages]

“A novel that restores the Brazilian tradition of posthumous memoirs, but without the aridity that surrounds Machado de Assis’ character Brás Cubas. Here, the novel’s main character is also prone to melancholy, but the humor and good-natured banter ever-present in Machado is absent or appears wrapped in tenderness.” — Julián Fuks (Folha de São Paulo)

I WOULD HAVE LOVED HIM IF I HAD NOT KILLED HIM (O CRIADO MUDO)

In an antique store in Brasilia, Fernando, a failed filmmaker, and Andrea, the leading lady from his one disappointing film, find each other again after ten years apart. Andrea seduces Fernando with her great-aunt Guilhermina’s life story, a wild tale involving a child bride who is raped by her husband at their wedding night and exacts a rigorous revenge involving an elaborate plan to murder him. The reader is then confronted with a rich young widow who discovers her sexuality while traveling through Europe in the 30s; a reclusive elderly woman living on a remote Brazilian ranch whom Andrea briefly came to know; and a menu of characters created to defy the imagination.

Though Fernando and Andrea’s affair doesn’t last, their fascination for Guilhermina endures, and each independently researches different facets of her life. The author’s debut novel is an exuberant dissection of crisscrossing paths with the intrigue of a mystery and the emotional impact of a biography.

Publication/Status: Originally published in Brazil in 1991 by Brasiliense, by Editora 34 in 1996 and then by Record in 2008. Also published by St. Martin’s Press (USA) and Los Libros del Asteroide (Spain). [239 pages]

“An exuberant dissection of crisscrossing paths with the intrigue of a mystery and the emotional impact of a biography.” — Kirkus Review

“The most cunning mystery title of the summer.” — Washington Post