Alan Minas was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1969, and graduated in cinema, with postgraduate qualifications in scriptwriting. His feature film, The Dionti Family, won awards at film festivals in Brasilia, Lisbon, Bologna, and San Diego. He also directed the documentary The Invented Death – Parental Alienation, widely acclaimed in Brazil and abroad. His award-winning short film, The Language of Things, was inspired by the work of the poet Manoel de Barros. Minas has also published a work of children’s fiction entitled Quando Ju escapou pra dentro (When Ju escaped inside), which he is turning into a film. His writing has not yet been translated into other languages.

The Dionti Family, based on his film, is his first novel, of which a short excerpt appears in the Brazil volume. It follows the lives of two boys, Kelton and Serino, and their father, Josué, in the rural interior of Brazil. The mother has left to follow the byways of the world, and the novel focuses on the relationship of the boys with their father, the memory of their mother, and their growing awareness of their place in the world.

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translator

David Brookshaw is a professor emeritus at the University of Bristol, England. He has published widely in the field of Brazilian and Lusophone postcolonial studies, and has also translated the work of various authors from Portuguese, including Mia Couto, Paulina Chiziane, Paulo Freire, and José Rodrigues Miguéis. His translation of Mia Couto’s Confession of the Lioness was short-listed for the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award. His most recent translation is Couto’s Woman of the Ashes (2018).