VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB| SOCORRO ACIOLI | A CABEÇA DO SANTO | THE HEAD OF THE SAINT 2021 Celebrating the Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures 18th MARCH 2021, 18.30-21.00 A Cabeça do Santo (2014) by SOCORRO ACIOLI (1975-) translated as The Head of the Saint (2014) 1 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures Which magical-fantastic events are happening in the huge head of a saint at the bottom of a hill in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the Northeast of Brazil? Or is it a dellusion? Whose singing voice reverberates within the head twice a day and puzzles Samuel, and where will it lead him? What is the role of Capeverdian mornas in the plot? An equal dose of appalling vengefulness and unbridled hatred: Why would Samuel’s mother give him the gruesome task of finding and killing his father and lighting three candles at the foot of the three main saints? Why would a mother want to murder the young daughter of her husband’s lover? Have fun finding out about the Brazilian north-eastern messianic devotional follies dedicated to multiple saints: Saint Francis, Padre Cícero, and the top favourite matchmaker Saint Anthony! Ruthless vengeance, unremitting corruption, ecclesiastical egotism, abject poverty, daft superstitious, and wicked family feuds bubbling in what ought to be a paradise: between mythical mountain ranges, caatingas, and idyllic beaches at the northern edge of the Atlantic Forest in Ceará. You may even find yourself gasping in disbelief at the inane reality which inspired the novel: an actual headless Saint Anthony’s body standing atop the Serrote Hill, in the Baturité Massif, in the town of Caridade with its head laying some1.8 miles at the bottom of the hill in the yard of a homestead since1980s! The Embassy of Brazil hosted Socorro Acioli in the autumn of literary events in 2014 with two events in which she shared the story of how she wrote The Head of the Saint. (moderated by Nadia K.) DETAILS OF AVAILABLE PUBLICATIONS: ENGLISH 2014 - The Head of the Saint translated by Daniel Hahn (1973-) published by Hot Key Books ISBN-10: 9781471402906 ISBN-13: 978-1471402906 Reprinted in 2016: by Delacorte Press ISBN-10: 055353792X ISBN-13: 978-0553537925 ASIN 1471402908 PORTUGUESE 2014- A Cabeça de Santo published by Companhia das Letras ISBN: 9788535923698 E-book in various formats (Google Play, Apple, Kobo) e.g. ASIN : B00IAXYE10 2 Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures Free download A Cabeca do Santo - Socorro Acioli.pdf SHORT HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND TRANSLATION A Cabeça do Santo is the first and only adult novel by Socorro Acioli. However, it has often been labelled as teen or young adult literature. It was published by Hot Key Books UK as a Young Adult novel. Hot Key Books are part of the Bonnier Group, a privately held Swedish media group of 175 companies operating in 15 countries, controlled by the Bonnier family. Others categorise it as crossover literature, a borderline between teen and adult literature. The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (1955-) CH, OBE, HonFRSE, FRCPE, FRSL re-enlivened the ancient practice of writing narratives in this manner from mid-1990s. Socorro Acioli insists that her novel is not magical realism, saying that although some of the facts are real, the novel is fictional. The idea to write it was inspired by a real episode in one of the towns, some sixty miles from the capital of the state of Ceará, Fortaleza. The not-so-secret real history of this novel is so far-fetched that one could imagine it was a fanciful invention. However, it is not. The name of the town where the crumbling body of Saint Anthony stands on the top of the Serrote Hill (Morro do Serrote) of the Baturité Massif in the state of Ceará is Caridade (Charity). Administratively, Caridade is under the management of the municipality or microregion of Canindé. Caridade is located within a fertile pilgrim area dating back to the nineteenth century, which has long attracted religious tourism. It is near the town of Juazeiro do Norte which brings devotees of Padre Cícero in 3 troves and the town of Canindé attracting devotees of Saint Francis. Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures In the early 1980s, the mayor of Caridade, Raul Linhares Teixeira, thought his town could benefit from religious tourism. The sculptor Francisco Barbosa de Oliveira, known as Franzé D'Aurora (1952- ) was commissioned to create a statue dedicated to the most celebrated saint in the northeast and throughout Brazil – Saint Anthony of Pádua, who is the patron saint of the town. Saint Anthony is known as the ‘Santo Casamenteiro’, that is, the Matchmaking/Wedding-Maker Saint and girls who wish to find a husband pursue numerous devotional practices. The Saint day is celebrated on 13th June. The folklore associated with St. Anthony is vast both is the northeast and throughout Brazil. One example of such practices is for the girl seeking a husband is to put an effigy of the saint head down in a water container telling the Saint that the effigy will be released only when a husband is found. No doubt an odd way of pleading with a saint, and displaying a good dose of folk coercion. The story goes that money ran out (or worse). The mayor of Caridade abandoned his money-making scheme. The town came to be known for its unfinished folly, and Saint Anthony derided for making it accursed. Numerous articles have appeared in the local Ceará and national printed press and media since that episode. Bizarrely, part of the head (empty shell) is in a yard and the other half in the middle of the street. There are numerous videos showing the location, and photos from the national motorway BR 020 which runs through the area. Socorro Acioli has also worked as a journalist. She was aware of that episode of the headless statue. In an interview on 11th November 2016, she mentioned how she referred to her annotations about ideas for books, in which she had inserted a cut-out of story in Caridade. (see www.somosvos.com.br/te-convido-a-reconhecer-socorro-acioli ) At the time around 2006, she wanted to live off fiction writing and sought possible courses to learn the necessary skills. She found out about the free five-day screenwriting 4 course offered by the Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014), the winner Page ©VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB –EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON All rights reserved - Creator & Convenor -©Nadia Kerecuk http://londres.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/book_club.xml 14-16 Cockspur Street London SW11Y 5BL @BrazilEmbassyUK VIRTUAL BRAZILIAN BILINGUAL BOOK CLUB – EMBASSY OF BRAZIL IN LONDON 2021-Pleasures of Reading Brazilian Literature #BrazilianLitReadingPleasures of the 1982 Nobel Prize. The newspaper cut-out was about how revolted the Caridade residents were that the head of the saint had become a public nuisance turned into a toilet, a den for sex and drugs, and that someone was even living in it. She used it to prepare a half- page proposal to be accepted at a writing workshop for beginners. Much spin about her first novel has focused on the fact that she made various attempts to be included in the ‘How to tell a tale’ workshop, conducted by Gabriel García Márquez, at the San Antonio de Los Banõs International Film and Television School in Cuba. Socorro Acioli was included in the 2006 workshop, after Gabriel García Márquez read her application and proposal to write about The Head of the Saint. Once she made the initial presentation, the Gabriel García Márquez thought that she had made up the story and accepted to mentor her. She even brought a recording she had made about the episode, which had to be converted and they found a DVD player to view it the following day. Gabriel García Márquez could hardly believe what he saw, and we can imagine how he felt. Socorro Acioli’s comment on that was: ‘O homem escreveu “Cem anos de solidão” e não acredita no nosso Santo Antônio! Aí, nesse dia eu tava mais relax e disse: “olhe, de onde eu venho, tem muito mais!’ The man wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude and does not believe in our Saint Anthony! Then on that day I was more chilled, and told him, ‘Look, the place I come from, has much more (of it)!’. (N.K.) Source: Socorro Acioli’s private collection. The novel was published in 2014, showing that Socorro Acioli laboured on it for quite a while after the workshop. Certainly, the quotations in each of the four parts of the novel are a covert clue regarding the other influences on this short novel.