YEAR IN REVIEW 1997: LITERATURE: PORTUGUESE

PORTUGUESE: Brazil. Among the works of fiction that received widespread attention in 1996 was Marcelo Rubens Paiva's No s tu, Brasil, a narration of the guerrilla movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Brazil and written as a catharsis for the suffering of the author's father during the rule of the military regime. New fiction by Silviano Santiago, Fausto Wolff, and Jos Sarney also appeared. Rubem Fonseca published a new collection of short stories, O buraco na parede, which returned to the theme of gratuitous violence in everyday life in Rio de Janeiro. A collection of heretofore unknown detective stories written by Pagu (Patrcia Galvo), the muse of Brazilian modernism, in the 1940s under the pseudonym King Shelter was published as Safra macabra. The last book of poems of Carlos Drummond de Andrade appeared under the title Farewell. Many of them suggested the anguish of his last years and his desire for death. In drama Antunes Filho characterized his Drcula e outros vampiros as fonemonol, reflecting his new interest in discovering the musicality of the Portuguese language. Mauro Rasi once again turned to autobiographical themes in his new play As tias de Mauro Rasi. Clara Ges's Gregrio dealt with the life of the Pernambucan communist activist Gregrio Bezerra. George Moura published Paulo Francis: o soldado fanfarro, a much-debated study of the role of Paulo Francis in the Brazilian theatre of the 1950s and early 1960s. New biographies of Joo Cabral de Melo Neto, by Jos Castello, and of Joo do Rio, by Joo Carlos Rodrigues, appeared during the year. Luiz Carlos Maciel's memoirs, Gerao em transe: memrias do tempo do Tropicalismo, highlighted the vanguard movement that began in the late 1960s. Of note also was the new contribution by Paulo Coelho (see BIOGRAPHIES) to the self-help theme, O monte cinco, in which biblical angels appear, mentioned in the same breath as the Internet. Giovanni Pontiero, the highly regarded translator into English of Brazilian poets and Portuguese writers, died in February. (IRWIN STERN) RUSSIAN The death of Joseph Brodsky (see OBITUARIES) on Jan. 28, 1996, signaled the end not only of an important literary career but also of an era in Russian poetry. Although Brodsky had lived in the U.S. since 1972, his death provoked a stream of critical commentary, memoirs, and reflections that filled Russia's newspapers and literary journals. The battle of literary schools and generations, pitting realism against postmodernism and the old against the new (or young), continued in 1996. The realist tendency in Russian literature was represented by such works as Viktor Astafyev's post-Soviet, fiercely honest Tak khochetsya zhit ("A Thirst for Life"), Andrey Dmitriyev's Povorot reki ("A Bend in the River"), Petr Aleshkovsky's 19th-century-styled Vladimir Chigrintsev, and Andrey Sergeyev's Albom dlya marok ("A Stamp Album"), the last of which won the 1996 Russian Booker Prize. Other prominent writers trying in their own way to tell the "truth" about Russia included Boris Yekimov, Gennady Golovin, Viktoriya Tokareva, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. In December 1995 Aleksey Varlamov was awarded an "anti-Booker Prize" by the literary weekly The Independent in protest against the Booker awarded to Georgy Vladimov. Postmodern works included Viktor Pelevin's Chapayev i pustota ("Chapayev and Emptiness"), a highly controversial book that not only satirized a classic of Soviet literature but also, in the author's own words, was the first Russian Buddhist novel. Aleksandr Borodynya's Tsepnoy shchenok ("The Guard Dog") depicted incestuous love between a mother and son set against the backdrop of civil war in the Abkhazian region of Georgia. There also were new works from Aleksandr Vernikov, Nina Sadur, and Valeriya Narbikova. One of the most important books was Dmitry Bakin's collection of stories Strana proiskhozhdeniya ("Country of Origin"), which fell somewhere between the realist and postmodern camps. Bakin, who had been compared to Camus and Sartre, depicted an existential world of consciousness-burdened individuals wandering through time. Other noted works of prose included pieces by Vladimir Sharov and novellas by Lyudmila Ulitskaya and Mikhail Kurayev. Russian poets continued to produce an ample and impressive stream of verse in 1996. From the older generation came works from Bella Akhmadulina, Andrey Voznesensky, Vladimir Sokolov, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who followed up his 1995 1,053-page anthology of 20th-century Russian poetry with a long poem entitled "Trinadtsat" ("The Thirteen"), an obvious allusion to, and attempted outdoing of, Aleksandr Blok's Dvenadtsat (The Twelve), a reflection on the Revolution of 1917. Neomodern and postmodern approaches to poetic form and language were represented in new works from Sergey Biryukov, Genrikh Sapgir, Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Aleksey Parshchikov, Dmitry Prigov, and Lev Rubinshtein. More traditional voices could be heard in works from Oleg Chukhontsev, Sergey Gandlevsky, Yelena Kabysh, Vladimir Gandelsman, Svetlana Kekova, and Ilya Kutik. Two of the more important poets to publish new volumes were Yelena Shvarts, perhaps the strongest of the post-Symbolist Russian voices, and Aleksandr Kushner, who was named a laureate of the Russian state for his quieter, more classical verse. Most Russian literary criticism remained highly ideological, whether pro- (Andrey Nemzer, Pavel Basinsky) or anti- (Vyacheslav Kuritsyn) realism. Lev Annensky and Alla Latynina showed themselves to be more objective and conscientious. On a higher level, Boris Paramonov, Georgy Gachev, Mikhail Epshtein, and Boris Grois continued to contribute to both Russian and Western criticism. Two titles were especially notable: Aleksandr Etkind's Sodom i Psikheya ("Sodom and Psyche"), a continuation of his ongoing psychological analysis of Russian culture, and Aleksandr Genis and Petr Vail's 60-iye ("The '60s"), their study of Homo sovieticus. The business of Russian literature remained rocky. While publishers specializing in detective, fantasy, erotic, and romance novels thrived, scholarly publishing remained largely moribund because of the withdrawal of government subsidies. Serious literature approximated more to the Western model, with relatively high prices and small pressruns. After a makeover of the magazine market, three journals in particular came of age in 1996: Znamya ("Banner"), a formerly Soviet "thick journal" (i.e., a monthly magazine of several hundred pages devoted to literature and culture), which succeeded in attracting readers by presenting a somewhat eclectic but high-quality mix of the important writers of the day; Kommentarii ("Commentaries"), which emerged as the most sophisticated of the elite little magazines; and Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie ("The New Literary Review"), which presented professional literary criticism and philology. (THOMAS EPSTEIN) SPANISH Arturo Prez-Reverte's gripping tale of ecclesiastical intrigue, La piel del tambor (published in 1995), set in contemporary Seville and full of charmingly improbable characters and labyrinthine plot twists, was the blockbuster novel of 1996. Manuel Vzquez Montalbn, winner of the National Letters Prize, produced three works. Un polaco en la corte del Rey Juan Carlos offered a semifictionalized collage of interviews conducted with 30 prominent figures shortly before the national elections in March. In Recetas inmorales the author, an acknowledged expert on Spanish gastronomy, spiced 62 of his favourite recipes with delicious commentaries on their erotic properties, and in a thinly veiled roman clef entitled El premio, his detective hero, Pepe Carvalho, cracked a new case, this time involving the murder of a suspiciously influential publishing mogul whose final act was to serve as host of the year's most lavish literary award banquet. Fernando Schwartz accepted the Planeta Prize for El desencuentro, a suspense-filled, bittersweet reflection, in the form of contrasting diaries, on opportunity lost and love squandered. The highest honour in Hispanic letters, the Cervantes Prize, went to the Spanish poet Jos Garca Nieto. Terenci Moix, who won the newly established Fernando Lara Prize, returned to the Egyptian setting of his earlier fiction in El amargo don de la belleza, a stylized, pseudohistorical narration immersed in the convulsive reign of the pharaoh Akhenaton. Jos Mara Merino's evocation of the persecuted 16th-century visionary Lucrecia de Len in Las visiones de Lucrecia was more rigorously faithful to the historical record. Nstor Lujn's La cruz en la espada, which explored an obscure episode in the life of the classical poet Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, appeared shortly after the author's death at age 73. Carmen Martn Gaite published her 14th novel, Lo raro es vivir, a compelling first-person narration of a week in the life of a woman forced to reassess her existence upon the death of her illustrious mother. Javier Maras offered 12 superb short stories in a widely praised collection entitled Cuando fui mortal. Critics were also impressed by the short fiction in El silencio del patinador by the promising young writer Juan Manuel de Prada. Two well-known essayists attracted many readers. Vicente Verd inveighed against the globalization of American culture in El planeta americano, and Eduardo Haro Tecglen's memoir, Un nio republicano, gave a moving account of his boyhood during the Second Republic. (ROGER L. UTT)