Rafael, what has changed in your career since you received the José Saramago Prize?
A lot has changed. Some things are objective and measurable, like publishing the book in Portugal, getting an entry into the country, now with Rebentar, also published here. Of course, all this increases the symbolic capital, I get invited to more events a lot and I have the feeling that people take us more seriously. It is a chain of symbolic capital letters, which are very subjective, but which change a lot and which is very much mine. It’s a whole life experience. Without the José Saramago Prize I would not be here. It was a huge reset because the award came at a time when I was very discouraged and in crisis and almost threw in the towel. I hadn’t been able to publish the book and with the whole crisis we had in Brazil, with the pandemic and Bolsonaro’s government, everything had changed a lot, it seemed like everything we wrote was no longer useful for this new world. Moreover, the Saramago Prize was my biggest dream, I fell from one extreme to the other. I think that when I think about it, twenty or thirty years from now, it’s likely that my whole life, wherever I end up, I can somehow connect to now, like the books I write, everything . will have this split of life. So I think I, Rafael of 2023, will do things that I will still attribute to this award.
What do you think about the publication of the work? Bust in Portugal?
I’m very happy that it’s going to more places, it’s my first novel and especially because of the theme, which somehow appears in all the books, which is the question of bonding. It’s a very important story to me.
Source: DN
