Exemplary Humans
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JULIANA LEITE MAKES HER ENGLISH-LANGUAGE DEBUT WITH A NOVEL ABOUT ONE WOMAN’S PAST AND ALL OF OUR FUTURES
Ever since the unnamed threat took over, 100-year-old Natália has been stuck inside her Rio de Janeiro apartment, alone. Well, not entirely alone—her loved ones may be gone but they never really left her, plus she’s pretty sure there’s a spy watching her every move through the window.
As she waits for the daily call from her daughter who lives halfway across the world, the old woman revisits scenes from her life. There’s her husband Vicente who obsessively erased maps of Brazil; her best friend Sarah, the cookie seller; Jorge who gave tarot readings for both humans and birds; and the comrades who joined her in resisting Brazil’s dictatorship, at least until they were forced into hiding. Exemplary Humans is an ambitious novel about the quirks of memory and the delights and horror of aging.
Juliana Leite
Juliana Leite is a Brazilian writer based in São Paulo. Her work has been published in Italy, France, Portugal, the UK, and the US, appearing in The Paris Review, the French newspaper Libération, and many Brazilian magazines. She's been awarded the O. Henry Prize for the story "My Good Friend" and is the first Brazilian writer to ever achieve the distinction; the story was optioned for film. Her previous works have been shortlisted for and awarded many prizes in Brazil, including the Critics' Choice for best novel with her debut book, also optioned for film. Juliana has been a fellow at Art Omi, Ucross Foundation, and Hawthornden Foundation.
Zoë Perry
Translated by
Zoë Perry is a Canadian-American translator who has translated work by several contemporary Portuguese-language authors, including Emilio Fraia, Clara Drummond, Rodrigo de Souza Leão, Lourenço Mutarelli, and Carol Bensimon. Her translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Astra, n+1 and The Paris Review. Zoë was awarded a PEN/Heim grant for her translation of Veronica Stigger's Opisanie Swiata and was selected for a residency at the Banff International Translation Centre for her translation of Emilio Fraia's Sevastopol . Her translation of Ana Paula Maia's Of Cattle and Men won the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation in 2023. She is a founding member of the Starling Bureau, a translators collective.
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