General

Chico Buarque wins Camões Lifetime Achievement Award

This is the biggest accolade in Portuguese-language literature

Gilberto Costa

Published on 22/05/2019 - 16:37

Brasília

Brazilian singer, songwriter, playwright, and writer Chico Buarque, 74, is the recipient of the 31st Camões Award. The accolade was granted yesterday (May 21) and took into account the artist’s whole literary oeuvre. Along with it comes a prize of 100 thousand euros.

Regarded as the main decoration in lusophone literature, the Camões Award was created in 1989 by Brazil and Portugal. Every year, an author is named “whose work contributes to the projection and recognition of the language,” according to the Ministry of Culture of Portugal.

Background

Buarque debuted as a fiction writer in 1974 with the novela Fazenda Modelo. In 1979, he published the children’s book Chapeuzinho Amarelo. His first novel, Estorvo, was launched in 1991. Four years later, his second novel came out, Benjamin. Also published were Budapest (2003), Spilt Milk (2009), and My German Brother (2014). He also wrote the plays Roda Viva (1968), Calabar (1972), Gota D’Água (1974), and Ópera do Malandro (1978).

Buarque is the 13th Brazilian to receive the award, which has been bagged by writers Raduan Nassar (2016), Ferreira Goulart (2010), Lygia Fagundes Telles (2005), and Jorge Amado (1994), among others.

Jury

The award was announced on social media by the National Library of Rio de Janeiro. The jury of the 31st edition of the Camões Awards convened at the headquarters of the library in Rio de Janeiro Tuesday.

The jury was made up of Manuel Frias Martins, professor with the language department of the University of Lisbon and head of the Portuguese Association of Literary Critics; Clara Rowland, associate professor with the Department of Social and Human Sciences of the New University of Lisbon; Antonio Cícero, Brazilian essayist and poet; Antonio Hohlfeldt, professor at the Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul; Ana Paula Tavares, Angolan poet and university professor in Lisbon; and Nataniel Ngomane, professor with the Language and Social Sciences Department of the Eduardo Modlane University, in Mozambique.