São Paulo – Panel As mil e uma noites de espera (The one-thousand-and-one-night wait), featuring Lebanese descendant authors Milton Hatoum and Mamede Jarouche and journalist Jorge Oliveira as moderator, will take place at 7 pm this Friday (28) at Teatro Guarany, in the city of Santos, as part of the 10th Tarrafa Literária, a literary event held by bookstore owner and editor José Luiz Tahan. Pictured above is a panel of the festival’s 9th edition.
Milton Hatoum is a fiction writer and Mamede Jarouche is an Arabic-Portuguese translator and a researcher into Arab culture. According to Tahan, the name of the panel is a conflation of the pair’s best-known works: One Thousand and One Nights, a classic of Arabic literature which Jarouche translated directly into Portuguese – bypassing the French version and thereby retrieving much of the original culture – and A Noite da Espera, a novel by Hatoum that’s partly set in Santos.
“This meeting is intended to connect the works and their authors, one as a fictionist and the other as a translator-cum-scholar, building parallels between subject matters and pondering their contents and writing processes,” said Tahan, himself a second-generation Lebanese descendant who believes that Santos, like few other cities in Brazil, is naturally accommodating of hybrid cultures, since it was built by immigrants who arrived in ships.
The Tarrafa will also cover feminism, sports, poetry and prose, and for the first time it will honor a writer – Ranulpho Prata, the author of Navios Iluminados. According to Tahan, “this is a way of bringing up names that are not part of the collective imagination, but who have done a lot for the city and for literature.” Prata was a Sergipe-born physician who lived in the Santos area during the 1930s. Excerpts from his works will be read throughout the festival. Tahan said that from now on, a different author will be honored each edition.
Tarrafa will also feature the panel O lugar de fala, o lugar da escrita, featuring Santos-born writer Djamila Ribeiro, the author of O que é o lugar de fala? – the second-best-selling book at the Paraty International Literary Festival (Flip) this year –, journalist and writer Eliane Brum, and professor Simone Rodrigues Batista as moderator. “We will invariably delve into the current scenario in Brazil. This atypical period we are living in should permeate all panels at some point,” Tahan pondered.
The event relies on backing from the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, the Embassy of Sweden and the Embassy of Portugal (writers from both countries will be present). For Tahan, this support is important in order to keep the event free of charge and open to the public. “These supporters help enable the festival and tailor its contents. It’s a very rewarding give-and-take, and we intend to keep working this way. Santos is naturally welcoming of different cultures,” he said.
The organizer also said all panels are accessible to beginner and advanced readers alike, and that informal language is used in a bid to encourage people to read for pleasure’s sake. The event will run until the 30th in Santos, before continuing in São Paulo’s Livraria da Vila on the 1st. The full program is available from the festival’s website.
Quick facts
Panel 4: As mil e uma noites da espera
Milton Hatoum, Mamede Jarouche. Moderator: Jorge Oliveira
Friday 29th, 7 pm at Teatro Guarany, Santos
Praça dos Andradas, 100 – Downtown
10th Tarrafa Literária – International Literature Festival
September 26-30 – Teatro Guarany – Santos, SP
October 1st – Livraria da Vila – São Paulo, SP
Free admission
Find out more
Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
