Luiz Ruffato

Born to an immigrant and working-class family in Cataguazes, Luiz Ruffato had an early inclination to literature. Nonetheless, following the request of his mother – who was a Portuguese washerwoman – and father – who was an Italian popcorn salesman – Ruffato had an apprenticeship as salesman in Cataguases before moving to Juiz de Fora and studying journalism. In Juiz de Fora, Ruffato worked as a mechanic by day and studied journalism by night. His working class and immigrant inheritance are reflected in his work. His cycle of five novels entitled "Inferno Provisório" [Temporary hell] portrays the story of Brazilian industrialization from the 1950s on. Once he graduated as a journalist, Ruffato moved to São Paulo to work in his new profession. São Paulo also became the stage, along with Minas Gerais, to Ruffato's short stories and novels. "Eles eram muitos cavalos" tells, in 69 fragments, the daily life and contradictions of São Paulo, Brazil's biggest metropolis.

In 2012 Luiz Ruffato was Distinguished Brazilian Writer in Residence at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley. In 2013 his novel "Domingos sem deus" was awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize.

Ruffato's project was fictionalize the story of the Brazilian working class, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Each volume deals with a particular moment in the history of Brazilian proletariat. According to Ruffato, in a 2008 interview,:

In 2007 Ruffato was invited to write for the collection “Amores Expressos,” a collection of love stories published by Companhia das Letras, one of Brazil's most important publishing houses. The project sent different writers to different cities in the world, where their assignment was to reside and to write a love story. Ruffato was invited to travel to Lisbon in Portugal. In 2009 he published the novel Estive em Lisboa e lembrei de você as the result of his participation in the project. The book tells the story of Sérgio, a native of Cataguases, who moves to Lisbon in search of work and as a way to restart his life away from the hardship of his native city. The story is told through the life of Sérgio and depicts the drama of many Brazilian immigrants that go to Portugal in search of better conditions of life but end up working lower skill and lower paying jobs.

Ruffato's first novel, eles eram muitos cavalos was published in 2001. It won the prize Troféu APCA e Prêmio Machado de Assis for best novel of 2001. With a non linear structure, the book is made of 70 fragments. All fragments happen in the same day (05/09/2000) in the city of São Paulo. The novel's title is an allusion to a poem by the Brazilian poet Cecília Meirelles, called “Dos Cavalos da Inconfidência”.

In 2005 Ruffato started – with the novel Mamma, Son Tanto Felice – a series called "Temporary Hell", made up of five volumes. The series continued withO Mundo Inimigo, published a year later. And, later on, Vista Parcial da Noite (2006), O Livro das Impossibilidades (2008) and Domingos sem Deus (2011).

Ruffato also wrote the poetry collections As máscaras singulares (2002) e Paráguas verdes (2011). He also published an essay about the modernist movement of his native Cataguases, was anthologized in several collections and organized many other anthologies and collections such as 25 mulheres que estão fazendo a nova literatura brasileira (2005) and the short story of Luiz Fernando Emediato (2004).

In 2000 Ruffato published another collection of short stories, called (os sobreviventes). The book received an honorable mention at the Premio Casa de las Américas in 2001. The book is made of six short stories – “A solução”, "O segredo", "Carta a uma jovem senhora", “A expiação”, "Um outro mundo" e “Aquário” – in which all characters are representative of the lower proletariat of, once again, Cataguases. All stories deal with the hardship of life, the suffering of the lower classes and a pervasive lack of hope. The language of the stories explore the spoken vernacular and popular expressions.

Ruffato's first published work was the short stories collection Histórias de Remorsos e Rancores (1998). Made up of seven short stories, Histórias de Remorsos e Rancores was centered in a set of characters from the “beco do Zé” (Zé's alley), in Cataguases, Ruffatos city of origin. The short stories are neither interrelated nor have a chronological order. The only thing that connect them are the poor working class characters, underemployed or in illegal trades such as prostitution. The book was well received by the specialized critique.

Luiz Fernando Ruffato de Souza (Cataguases, Brazil, February 1961) is a contemporary Brazilian writer. An alumnus of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Ruffato worked as a journalist in São Paulo and published several fiction books including Historia das Remorsos e Rancores (1998) and Eles eram muitos cavalos [They were Many Horses] (2001). The latter book garnered the APCA literary prize.