Adriana Lunardi (Brazil)

In “Vesperas” the author traces the last moments in the lives of great female writers. She reads “Dottie” - the last moments of Dorothy Parker, told from the perspective of her dog.

Adriana Lunardi is an author, journalist and television script-writer whose literary debut has already been honoured with two Brazilian literature awards. In her widely acclaimed collection of short stories, As meninas da Torre Helsinque (The Girls of the Helsinki Tower), published in 1996, Lunardi addresses the theme of love and sexuality in the lives of young girls. And her latest work, Vésperas (Afternoons), which recounts the last hours of famous women writers, is an equally sensitive and imaginative homage to women's contribution to world literature.

Despite the gravity of their subject matter, the nine short stories about the dying moments of Dorothy Parker, Virginia Woolf, Clarice Lispector, Colette, Katherine Mansfield, Sylvia Plath, Zelda Fitzgerald, Ana Cristina César and Julia da Costa are written in a style that is both light and devoid of pathos. For Virginia Woolf, for example, who is tormented by the voices of unwritten texts, the walk to the river was a liberation. Dorothy Parkers' lonely death is told from the restricted viewpoint of a dog. Without mimicking the writers' own style, and by relating their last thoughts and gestures, Adriana Lunardi manages to establish a connection with their works by taking literary form beyond that which has already been authenticated by their biographers.

Adriana Lunardi, who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, was born in 1964 in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina. She was awarded the Brazilian National Library's writers' scholarship and was honoured with the Prêmio Fumproarte and the Prêmio Açorianos in the categories "New Discoveries" and "Best Stories". "Vésperas" has been translated into French, Croatian and Spanish and was also published in Portugal in 2006.

An event held by the international literature festival berlin as part of the project "Copa da Cultura – Brazil and Germany 2006" in co-operation with the House of World Cultures and the Ministério da Cultura do Brasil.