{"id":567596,"date":"2025-11-14T17:50:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=567596"},"modified":"2025-11-14T17:50:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T20:50:09","slug":"chico-buarques-books-boost-international-circulation-of-his-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/chico-buarques-books-boost-international-circulation-of-his-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Chico Buarque’s books boost international circulation of his work"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a scene from Federico Fellini\u2019s (1920\u20131993) I Vitelloni<\/em> (1953), a drunken character floats a wild idea to his friend: leave it all behind and start over in Brazil. Fueled by exoticized fantasies\u2014embodied by figures like Carmen Miranda (1909\u20131955)\u2014mid-century Italian filmmakers saw Brazil as a tropical utopia: sensuous, joyful, and rich in natural beauty. It became a canvas for dreams that would be impossible on a continent devastated by Word War II (1939\u20131945). Decades later, Chico Buarque\u2019s exile in Rome between 1969 and 1970 began to unravel that fantasy, according to Luca Bacchini, a Brazilianist scholar at Sapienza University of Rome.<\/p>\n

Bacchini, who has spent over 20 years studying historical and cultural ties between Brazil and Italy, has devoted much of his research to Buarque\u2019s Italian connections. In the 1970s, Buarque released albums in Italy, teamed up with legends like Ennio Morricone (1928\u20132020), and saw his songs sung by stars like Sergio Endrigo (1933\u20132005) and Mina Mazzini. The song \u201cA banda,\u201d for instance, was reworked into Italian twice, with one version notably twisting the song\u2019s meaning to fit Mazzini\u2019s artistic persona. \u201cWhen Chico arrived in Italy during his self-exile, record companies crafted strategies to fit him into a market steeped in caricatured views of Brazil,\u201d Bacchini says. \u201cThey were determined to make him fit the mold.\u201d But Buarque\u2019s work didn\u2019t play to those fantasies\u2014and that, Bacchini argues, is precisely why it helped to break them down. \u201cHe paid a price for it,\u201d Bacchini adds. \u201cHe was misunderstood by a market that, at the time, was used to consuming a very specific version of Brazilian culture.\u201d Bacchini is now working on two books: one on Buarque\u2019s Italian exile, the other on his literary career.<\/p>\n

Just as with his music career, Buarque faced resistance in gaining literary recognition in Italy. \u201cIn Italian academia, Buarque wasn\u2019t taken seriously as a Brazilian literary figure\u2014he was seen as a musician who dabbled in fiction,\u201d Bacchini explains. He draws a parallel with Vinicius de Moraes (1913\u20131980), who, to this day in Italy, is often remembered more as a songwriter than the poet he was. In Buarque\u2019s case, that perception began to shift in recent years, especially after he won the Cam\u00f5es Prize in 2019. \u201cThe literary canon is still stiff in Italian academia,\u201d Bacchini says. \u201cBut more students are finding their way to Brazil\u2014and to Portuguese\u2014through Chico\u2019s novels.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mondadori Portfolio \/ Getty Images<\/span>The author sitting in front of a church in Rome, Italy, during exile in 1969Mondadori Portfolio \/ Getty Images<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Bacchini now teaches a full-year course at Sapienza University in Rome devoted entirely to Chico Buarque\u2019s work. \u201cAmong younger students, Chico the novelist is almost more famous than Chico the singer,\u201d Bacchini notes. \u201cSome of them have never heard \u2018Apesar de Voc\u00ea\u2019 or \u2018C\u00e1lice,\u2019 but they\u2019ve already read Budapest<\/em> or Bambino a Roma<\/em> (Child in Rome).\u201d He recalls that between 1953 and 1955, Chico\u2019s father, historian and sociologist S\u00e9rgio Buarque de Holanda (1902\u20131982), held the first chair of Brazilian literature at Sapienza.<\/p>\n

Six of Buarque\u2019s novels have been translated into Italian, including Spilt milk<\/em>, Budapest<\/em>, and Essa gente<\/em> (These people). In Brazil, he began writing while still a teenager, publishing in his high school newspaper in S\u00e3o Paulo. In 1966, one of his short stories appeared in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo<\/em>. His first long-form work, Fazenda modelo<\/em> (Animal farm), came out in 1974. But it wasn\u2019t until 1991 that his breakout novel Turbulence<\/em> appeared, launching a fiction career with Companhia das Letras, which has since published seven of his eleven books. His novels have been translated into Spanish and English as well, including Turbulence<\/em>, Benjamin<\/em>, and Budapest<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the US, Chico Buarque\u2019s literary work has helped make his broader oeuvre better known, says Charles A. Perrone, professor emeritus in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of Florida. Perrone has been studying Buarque\u2019s music since the 1970s. He notes that in the US, Buarque is less widely recognized as a musician compared to Milton Nascimento, Caetano Veloso, or Gilberto Gil\u2014but the novel Turbulence<\/em> began to change that. \u201cTurbulence<\/em> (Pantheon, 1993) was warmly received by critics in the US and UK,\u201d Perrone explains. \u201cAnd beginning in the late 1990s, translated essays by literary critic Roberto Schwarz helped deepen interest in Buarque\u2019s fiction.\u201d Perrone, who authored a 2022 book exploring the 11 tracks on Buarque\u2019s 1978 self-titled album, notes: \u201cAmerican audiences often miss the poetic subtlety in Chico\u2019s songs. But his prose has a bigger appeal\u2014especially outside the academic bubble.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Courtesy<\/span>Buarque\u2019s novels subtly embed the tangled roots of Brazil\u2019s social structureCourtesy<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

In Portugal, however, Buarque\u2019s reception followed a different trajectory. Clara Rowland, a professor at NOVA University Lisbon, says Buarque has been a household name in Portugal since the 1960s, with generations growing up on his music. Rowland, who teaches in the Department of Portuguese Studies, says that bond became especially clear in 2019, when Buarque was awarded the Cam\u00f5es Prize, with her among the judges. The Cam\u00f5es Prize, founded in 1989 by the governments of Brazil and Portugal, is considered the highest literary honor in the Portuguese-speaking world. \u201cI witnessed the outpouring of emotion when the news was received in Portugal. The response was explosive,\u201d Rowland recalls in an interview with Pesquisa FAPESP<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For Rowland, the soundscape\u2014music and voice in particular\u2014is essential to Buarque\u2019s writing. In his latest novel, Bambino a Roma<\/em>, which weaves together memories\u2014real and imagined\u2014of a Roman childhood, a pivotal moment comes when the narrator reconnects with a childhood friend by singing a samba in Italian. \u201cMusic acts like a thread,\u201d she says, \u201cpulling the characters back to themselves, stitching together shards of memory.\u201d Rowland sees the book, published last year in Portugal and Brazil, as a blend of memoir and reflection on the craft of writing. In one scene, the narrator pedals through Rome with a worn-out map. When it falls apart, he sketches a new one on the back\u2014a personal version of the city, a Rome, as he puts it, \u201cbuilt from the inside out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rowland also argues that Buarque has few equals when it comes to crafting songs\u2014an art he\u2019s honed steadily for decades. \u201cHis fiction, though, emerges from a riskier space,\u201d she observes. \u201cIt\u2019s exploratory\u2014filled with missteps, experiments, and returns. The uneven quality of his texts is part of this process of exploring writing, which his books, in fact, often acknowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buarque\u2019s fiction emerges from a risky space. It\u2019s exploratory\u2014filled with missteps, experiments, and returns<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chico Buarque\u2019s fiction was the focus of a special edition of the journal Literatura e Sociedade<\/em>, published in late 2024, featuring essays by scholars from diverse fields examining his literary trajectory. Edited by Maria Augusta Fonseca, a professor at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s School of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Humanities (FFLCH-USP), the issue places Buarque in a lineage that begins with Machado de Assis (1839\u20131908) and continues through Brazilian modernists like M\u00e1rio de Andrade (1893\u20131945) and Oswald de Andrade (1890\u20131954). She argues that novels such as Spilt milk<\/em> (2009) converse with classics like Machado de Assis\u2019s The posthumous memoirs of Br\u00e1s Cubas<\/em> (1881) and Dom Casmurro<\/em> (1899), and also with Oswald de Andrade\u2019s Mem\u00f3rias sentimentais de Jo\u00e3o Miramar<\/em> (Sentimental memoirs of Jo\u00e3o Miramar; 1924). Though varied in theme, these works, Fonseca suggests, are all structurally fragmented and challenge readers to piece together meaning in worlds marked by broken connections. \u201cBuarque\u2019s prose stands out for its musical pacing,\u201d Fonseca says. \u201cAnd for the humor that often undercuts the storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the defining features of Buarque\u2019s fiction, she notes, is its engagement with history. \u201cHis books tackle the dilemmas of modern Brazil head-on, while never losing sight of the deeper historical strata that shape them,\u201d Fonseca explains. \u201cThey show how the country remains trapped in foundational contradictions\u2014poverty, inequality, violence.\u201d This is particularly evident in Spilt milk<\/em>, where the narrator\u2014a centenarian on his deathbed\u2014dictates the story of his life to a nurse. \u201cHe becomes a tyrant not just of narrative but of history,\u201d she says, \u201cembodying the vices and entitlements of the elite class he represents. He reminisces with little critical distance, celebrating stances that today feel deeply disturbing\u2014like a defense of slavery and open classism.\u201d Fonseca argues that while the narrator appears to be simply recounting his life story on the surface, the subtext delivers a pointed critique of Brazilian society. \u201cIn the novel, Buarque discreetly weaves in elements that expose the complexity of the country\u2019s social fabric, including familial ties between slave owners and the enslaved, which appear subtly embedded in the narrative. It takes a careful reader to pick up on these layers,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n

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MMaranh\u00e3o\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress<\/span>Buarque (center<\/em>) at the 2023 Cam\u00f5es Prize ceremony, held at the Pal\u00e1cio Nacional de Queluz, Sintra, PortugalMMaranh\u00e3o\u2009\/\u2009Folhapress<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Denilson Soares Cordeiro, a philosophy professor at the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (UNIFESP), offers a reading of Buarque\u2019s fiction through the lens of literary critic Antonio Candido\u2019s (1918\u20132017) notion of \u201cradicalism.\u201d In Candido\u2019s framework, radicalism is a historically grounded stance of social and political critique. \u201cIn his literature, Chico expresses a radical mode of being a writer,\u201d Cordeiro says. \u201cBut it\u2019s a middle-class radicalism, constrained by the limits of his own social position.\u201d This tension surfaces in Anos de chumbo e outros contos<\/em> (Years of lead and other stories; 2021), a collection that confronts themes like police and military violence, sexual assault, madness, and social decay. One story follows a 14-year-old girl whose parents sell her to her uncle, a paramilitary thug. \u201cAnd yet,\u201d Cordeiro notes, \u201cthe child narrator tells the story with disturbing serenity.\u201d Cordeiro observes that this subdued tone recurs throughout the book\u2014extreme violence is relayed with a strange detachment. \u201cThis distance,\u201d he argues, \u201cmarks the outer edge of Buarque\u2019s radicalism. It signals the political limits of his literature.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiction offers Buarque a space for aesthetic and political exploration of themes that had long simmered in his songwriting, says sociologist Marcelo Ridenti of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Ridenti argues that Buarque\u2019s novels, particularly Benjamin<\/em> (1995), explore the tension between subjective and historical time. \u201cIn Benjamim<\/em>, the narrative revolves around one man\u2019s obsession with a lost love,\u201d Ridenti explains. \u201cBut the real subject is time\u2014not chronological time, but time as it\u2019s experienced by the characters.\u201d<\/p>\n

This approach, he says, opens space to reflect critically on the erosion of the collective dream that once cast Brazil as \u201cthe country of the future.\u201d That dream, Ridenti argues, has faded over recent decades, as collective visions for transformation have lost traction. \u201cEven left-wing governments have failed to offer real alternatives to a society dominated by consumption and labor exploitation,\u201d he says. Ridenti believes Buarque captures this crumbling of historical consciousness. \u201cHe shows how the utopian energy of the 1960s and 1970s has unraveled,\u201d Ridenti says, \u201cleaving behind a feeling of temporal drift.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story above was published with the title “Global audiences<\/strong>” in issue 351 of May\/2025.<\/p>\n

Scientific articles<\/strong>
\nCORDEIRO, D. S. Mat\u00e9ria brasileira e radicalismo em Anos de chumbo e outros contos<\/a>. Revista Literatura e Sociedade. Romance<\/strong>. Conto. Mem\u00f3ria. Teatro. Homenagem a Chico Buarque. Vol. 31, no. 40. 2024.
\nRIDENTI, M. Benjamim, Benjamin<\/em>. Romance, hist\u00f3ria e melancolia de esquerda<\/a>. Revista Literatura e Sociedade<\/strong>. Romance. Conto. Mem\u00f3ria. Teatro. Homenagem a Chico Buarque. Vol. 31, no. 40. 2024.<\/p>\n

Book<\/strong>
\nPERRONE, C. A. Chico Buarque\u2019s first Chico Buarque<\/strong>. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Translated into several languages, the author’s novels have earned recognition from awards and literary circuits in countries such as Italy and Portugal","protected":false},"author":601,"featured_media":567606,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[245],"coauthors":[1600],"class_list":["post-567596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","tag-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":567618,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567596\/revisions\/567618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567596"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=567596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}