Biography

Cristovão Tezza was born in Lages, Santa Catarina, in 1952. His father died in June 1959; two years later, the family moved to Curitiba, Paraná, a city that became an important backdrop for his literature and where he still lives today.

In 1968, he joined the Centro Capela de Artes Populares (CECAP), directed by W. Rio Apa in Curitiba and Antonina (Paraná), with whom he would work until 1977, actively participating in its artistic community. Also in 1968, he was part of the team for the first play by actress and director Denise Stoklos, and the following year he participated in two productions by the group XPTO, directed by Ari Pára-Raio. His artistic and community experiences as a young man would be the subject of one of his first novels, Ensaio da Paixão, written in 1981.

In 1970, he completed high school at Colégio Estadual do Paraná. The following year, he entered the Merchant Navy Officers Training School (RJ), leaving in August of the same year. In December 1974, he traveled to Portugal to study Literature at the University of Coimbra, enrolled under the Luso-Brazilian Agreement, but since the university was closed due to the Carnation Revolution, he spent a year wandering around Europe, returning to Brazil in February 1976.

In January 1977, he got married and spent a year in Rio Branco, Acre, where he enrolled in the Literature Course, moving to Curitiba the following year. In 1984, already studying for his master's degree, he moved to Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, and for two years worked as a Portuguese Language teacher at UFSC. He returned to Curitiba in 1986, now teaching at the Federal University of Paraná; In 2001, he completed his doctorate in Brazilian Literature at USP, with the thesis Between Prose and Poetry - Bakhtin and Russian Formalism, published the following year.

In 2009, in the wake of the great success of his 2007 novel The Eternal Son, he resigned from the university to dedicate himself exclusively to literature.

He is the author of more than 20 works of fiction, and is one of the most prolific, award-winning and translated Brazilian authors of his generation. Among his main novels are Trapo (1988), which launched him nationally, A suavidade do vento (1991), Juliano Pavollini (1992), Breve espaço entre cor e sombra (1988), O fotógrafo (2004), O filho eterno (2007), O professor (2014), A tirania do amor (2018) and A tensão superficial do tempo (2020). Several short stories, later published in the collection Beatriz (2011), created the character who would reappear in the novels Um erro emocional (2010), A tradutora (2016) and Beatriz e o poeta (2022).

In the non-fiction field, he published two anthologies of chronicles - Um operário em férias (A worker on vacation) (2013) and A máquina de caminhar (A walking machine) (2016), his literary autobiography O espírito da prosa (The spirit of prose) (2012), the book of poems Eu, prosador, me confesso (I, prose writer, confess myself) (limited edition, 2017) and the collection of essays Literatura à margem (Literature on the margins) (2018). In the academic field, she published Entre a prosa e a poesia - Baktin e o formalismo russo (Between prose and poetry - Baktin and Russian formalism) (2002) and the collection Leituras - Resenhas & ensaios (Readings - Reviews & essays) (2014).

His greatest success, the novel The Eternal Son, was adapted for film (directed by Paulo Machline) and for the theater (directed by Daniel Herz, in Brazil and Argentina, with text adapted by Bruno Lara Rezende), and received the Jabuti, Portugal-Telecom (now Oceanos), Zaffari-Bourbon, Bravo!, APCA and São Paulo de Literatura awards in Brazil. The French edition received the Charles Brisset award from the Paris Institute of Psychiatry, and the English edition was one of the ten finalists for the IMPAC-Dublin award, which recognized the best international works published in English in 2011. In 2025, a poll by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, in a survey of a hundred critics, highlighted The Eternal Son among the five best Brazilian novels of the 21st century.

His books have been published in a dozen countries: France, Australia, China, Croatia, England, Mexico, Macedonia, Portugal, Denmark (The Eternal Son); Italy (The Eternal Son and The Professor); Netherlands (The Eternal Son and An Emotional Error); Slovenia (A Night in Curitiba and The Eternal Son); Norway (The Eternal Son and The Professor); Finland (The Professor and The Eternal Son); United States (The Eternal Son and Brief Space Between Color and Shadow); Portugal (The Eternal Son) and Spain (Catalan edition of The Eternal Son). In addition to his novels, he has short stories published in Germany, Austria, England, Finland, Italy, Russia, France, the United States, Ecuador and Mexico.

His most recent work, Visita ao pai (A Visit to the Father), which he defines as a "novel of memory" about the correspondence left by his father, will be released in October 2025 by Companhia das Letras.

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