Brazilian · b. 1935
Raduan Nassar is a Brazilian writer born in 1935 in Pindorama, in the state of São Paulo, to Lebanese immigrant parents. He studied law and literature in São Paulo and worked as a journalist before turning to fiction. He published two short books: the novel Lavoura arcaica (1975, Ancient Tillage) and the novella Um copo de cólera (1978, A Cup of Rage). Both are known for dense, rhythmic prose, and both were adapted into films. In the early 1980s he stopped writing and left literature to run a farm in the interior of São Paulo state. His small body of work gained a wide readership in Brazil and later abroad through translations. In 2016 he received the Camões Prize, the highest honour in Portuguese-language literature. Nassar remains a rare case of a writer whose reputation rests on very few pages and a long silence.