Lygia Fagundes Telles, one of the main names in Brazilian literature and one of the writers of a generation that marked the national literary production, died at the age of 98 in São Paulo. She was at her home, and had her death confirmed by the literary agent Lucia Riff and by the Academia Paulista de Letras.
The writer is a milestone in Brazilian literature and the main awards — she was the winner of the Camões Prize in 2005, the biggest trophy in Portuguese-language literature, in addition to having won the Jabuti in 1966, 1974, 1996 and 2001. She has been a member of the Academia Brasileira de Letras since 1985, as well as belonging to the Academia Paulista de Letras.
Her work has unavoidable titles such as "Antes do Baile Verde", from 1970, "As Meninas", from 1973, "Ciranda de Pedra", from 1954, "O Jardim Selvagem", from 1965, among others.
Her prose is deep in the psychological dimension of the characters, as an excavation to find the deepest thing that exists in the human being - but deeply distant from the subjective of social reality and. An example is precisely "As Meninas", which mainly explores the issues of three university narrators, but closely linked to the Brazilian military dictatorship. The book came about after Lygia received a report of torture carried out by the government at home.
Daughter of a delegate and public prosecutor, the author was born in São Paulo in 1923, but she spent her childhood in different cities in the interior of São Paulo – among them, Areias, Assis, Apiaí and Sertãozinho. Back in the capital, she studied at the Caetano de Campos school, where she received her first literary incentives.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon