Works

* THE ETERNAL SON (O filho eterno)

Shortlisted 2012 International IMPAC-DUBLIN Literary Award

The Eternal Son received the
São Paulo Art Critics’ Association Award for that year’s best work of fiction, the Jabuti Prize, the Bravo! Award, the Portugal-Telecom Award, the São Paulo Literature Award, and the Zaffari & Bourbon Award, all for best novel or work of fiction.

What it is

In The eternal son, Tezza exposes the countless hardships and the delightul small victories involved in raising a son with Down syndrome. The author uses the issues that come up along the way, througout the 26 years of his son Felipe's life, to remember and reorganize his own life: the experience of living in a commune, the time spent in Germany as an illegal immigrant, the difficult aspects of beint a writer in his early thirties with a handful of published books, the suposed stability of being a professor in a state university.

Content

In the waiting room, between one cigarette and the other, the protagonist waits for the arrival of his first son. As the doctor comes in, he asks if everything went well and is certain of a positive response. In his head, he can already imagine his son aged five, his spitting image.

While he is trying to adjust to the newness of being a dad, he's given some new information: his son has Down syndrome. This piece of news knocks him off balance, provocking a rush of contradictory emotions. "A son is the idea of a son; a woman is the idea of a woman. Sometimes, things coincide with the ideas we have of them, sometimes not."


* Translations:

Italy - Bambino per sempre. Ed. Sperling & Kupfer. 2008. Translated by Maria Baiocchi. 256p. Kioske edition: RBA Itália, 2009. Collezione Vite al Bivio.

Portugal - O filho eterno. Editora Gradiva, 2008. (240 p.)

France - Le fils du printemps. Editions Métailié, 2009. Translated by Sébastien Roy.

Spain:

Català: El fill etern (Traduït per Josep Domènec Ponsatí) - Club Editor - Barcelona, September, 2009.

Australia and New Zealand - The eternal son. Scribe Publications. Translated by Alison Entrekin. (February, 2010)

Holland - Eeuwig kind. Translated by Arie Pos. Contact Publishers (September, 2009)

México - Editorial Elephas (soon)