Novel
Who if I Cry Out
Lições de abismo
Gustavo Corção · 1950
Synopsis
José Maria, a middle-aged engineer and teacher, learns from his doctor that he has leukaemia and has only three or four months left to live. Withdrawn into his room, he keeps a journal in which he seeks the meaning of his life and his death. He takes refuge in books, rereads Tolstoy, Machado de Assis or Voltaire, and returns to his past. According to the Gazeta do Povo, the novel, essay-like in manner, attacks along the way evolutionism, psychoanalysis, existentialism and Marxism.
Context
The only novel by its author, the book appeared in 1950 according to a Portuguese journal of 1953; Jornal Opção dates a first edition by Agir to 1953. It was awarded a prize by UNESCO and translated into many languages; it appeared in English in 1967 under the title Who if I Cry Out, in a translation by Clotilde Wilson. The poet Menotti del Picchia saw in it the greatest work of fiction written in Brazil, and Oswald de Andrade considered its author a master of the Brazilian novel after Machado de Assis.
Who it is for
A meditative novel, in which reflection counts for more than action; it has existed in English since 1967, but not in French.
Prizes and reception
Praised on publication by Oswald de Andrade as well as by Menotti del Picchia, and distinguished by Unesco.
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