Credit, Renato Parada/Disclosure
In Brazilian literary circles, 2026 is the year of Os Imortais, by Brazilian writer Paulliny Tort. The book has just won the Biblioteca Nacional Literary Prize and will be adapted for the screen by film producer Rodrigo Teixeira, from the Oscar-winning film Still I'm Here.
The title was launched in March by Fósforo Editora and is already in its sixth reprint. It was one of the best sellers at Flip (Paraty International Literary Festival) in this last edition. Translations into English, Spanish, French and even Polish are planned for the international market soon.
There is a surprising element in the success of a novel that is set around 50,000 years ago, tells the dramas of survival and relationships within a group of Neanderthals and that contains unusual words in the text such as "sanga" (a type of stream), "epicea" (a type of tree) and "aurochs" (an extinct ancestor of the ox).
(Neanderthals, although they have a popular image as extremely primitive, are considered close to homo sapiens in terms of evolution and intelligence. And the two human species even shared the same space for a few millennia, in an often tense and violent coexistence.)
Paulliny Tort is 47 years old and took a while to become a full-time writer. "I was a relatively late author. I started publishing when I was 37, because, firstly, I had a somewhat paralyzing self-criticism."
Before that, she says she worked as a secretary and receptionist, including occasional cleaning services, and sold wholemeal bread and samosa (a type of Indian pastry) to support herself ("I have something of an entrepreneur").
Tort (surname from her husband's Catalan family) graduated in journalism, worked in the field for 14 years, and also studied — without completing — Forestry Engineering, Oceanography and Biological Sciences, reflecting her interest in studying nature and the environment.
His two previous books were the novel Allegro Ma Non Troppo and the short story collection Erva Brava (which has one of its stories based on a BBC News Brasil report about deaths in grain silos).
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For The Immortals, she even wrote while fasting to try to understand the deprivations of the Neanderthal clan: "It gives you a very specific state of consciousness."
The writer spoke to BBC News Brasil during a visit to São Paulo. The interview has been edited for brevity and understanding.
BBC News Brasil - How was your first contact with literature?
Paulliny Tort - I'm a reader who started reading very early. I grew up in an all-female household: me, my mother and my grandmother. And with few resources. We almost never traveled, but my family was a family of readers. My mother participated in Círculo do Livro [a collection in which subscribers received a title every month and which had its peak of popularity in Brazil in the 1980s].
I had a lot of freedom to choose whatever I wanted. She gave me incredible things: the best stories by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Manuel Bandeira, Fernando Pessoa, Cora Coralina. I had all of this and I really enjoyed reading it.
BBC News Brasil - You studied forestry engineering, oceanography and biological sciences at university. The Immortals uses terms from botany and geology to describe the characters' setting. How important is nature and the environment in your writing and in your life?
Tort - I have a grandmother who taught me to love and observe nature a lot and I have always been very moved by living forms other than human ones. Although I'm from Brasília and grew up in the urban center, Brasília is a park city, a city with trees. Furthermore, we went to farms, to the countryside to visit relatives. I have a penchant for everything living, any small animal, plants.
When we read Stefano Mancuso [Italian author of Plant Revolution] or The Plot of Life [by the British Merlin Sheldrake], which talks about fungi, when we have an awareness, a familiarity with life on Earth, we are less surprised to know that the other has a consciousness that deserves greater attention and that can impress and surprise us.
BBC News Brasil - To what extent is The Immortals in line with scientific research on Neanderthals and at what point does the story take liberties as a work of fiction?
Tort - First, I think that The Immortals is not a treatise on how Neanderthals lived. This group of Neanderthals in my imagination communicates through a kind of proto-language, but the truth is that we don't know how they communicated. Maybe they already had a more developed language, maybe less. This narrator lends himself to being a translator of this world and their way of communicating. If I tried to create a language for them, I might be a bit "uga-uga", a bit naive. I left myself very free to imagine because you follow a flow of events that you don't fully control when you write fiction.
BBC News Brasil - What is your process for conceiving a story?
Tort - Writing a fiction story, for me, is like tuning in to a radio. You find a tune there, you find a channel and go. I don't control that much. So much so that, many years ago, I saw someone who sold psychographed books talking about the process, which she did not control. And, without disrespecting anyone's faith, I thought, "Okay, but this is a fiction writing process." I say it is spiritual, but not as if I had a spirit dictating to me. You enter a flow that is not like this one, of the mundane and the ordinary, which we, in the cities, have disconnected from.
We disconnect from anything that doesn’t have a practical nature. Imagination takes a backseat, children's play... and adults play, so no way. At that moment when you compare it almost to a psychographic, self-criticism is left aside, it's something that really flows.
BBC News Brasil - But is it something painful, painful, to reach the point that you consider ideal in your writing and history?
Tort - I think that authors who defend writing as a place of hardship, of suffering, are authors who, in general, had a more or less comfortable situation during their lives, a good home, a good job, and for them writing becomes this poetic torment, this place where I "struggle with the word". Acho que existe um fetiche do sofrimento, como se o sofrimento legitimasse a obra e desse a chancela da qualidade dela.
Eu já tive empregos horríveis em que eu ganhava mal, era maltratada. Para mim, hoje, estar dentro do meu quarto escrevendo é uma delícia, não tem um chefe me mandando fazer assim ou assado. It's totally liberating. Eu já fui secretária, recepcionista, vendedora, já vendi pão integral, já fiz tanta coisa.
Of course it's difficult. There was a time when I talked to Rita [Mattar], my editor, and I said "I think it's going to take me 10 years to write this book". And she said "okay, I'll wait". And that moment was very important for me.
But difficult is also good. An athlete, when preparing for a competition, for an important performance, or a dancer, who often gets injured due to work, the perfectionism he demands of himself, all of this requires a huge amount of dedication. E essa dedicação é maravilhosa, você poder se dedicar para uma coisa que sai da tua cabeça.
BBC News Brasil - Is it true that you fasted while writing the book to understand the state of penury and limitations that Neanderthal hunters and gatherers experienced?
Tort - I've always liked fasting, it's a very interesting experience, it brings a different awareness. And I wanted to participate in this world with the characters and experience some of what they were experiencing too. Furthermore, fasting physiologically gives you a very specific state of consciousness, different from what we feel here now talking.
I think I needed to go through that feeling, even though it wasn't completely foreign to me. Você passa pela raiva, você passa pela angústia, de repente você entra numa anestesia, de repente você flui, você gosta, você aprecia, logo você esquece que está com fome até o ponto em que o seu corpo meio que se desconecta da sua consciência.
Credit, Reuters
BBC News Brasil - The Immortals covers themes such as scarcity of resources, violence and dominance of the strongest, tribalism and distrust of the unknown, in addition to talking about a species of human that was extinct from Earth. Is there a dialogue in the book with what is happening in the world today?
Tort - I think violence is as present as collaboration. Algumas pessoas inventaram uma visão um pouco ingênua sobre a evolução ser totalmente pautada pela competição, quando a colaboração é superimportante para que as espécies vinguem. And this cooperation is both between individuals of the same species and between different species. And without it there is no life.
Essa defesa da lei do mais forte, da violência, como o único meio de sobreviver e vencer, é uma apropriação muito indevida dos processos da vida. There is this too: sometimes we go to extremes as a species to survive. The two things coexist, it is not a power cable.
I once heard a shaman tell me that we are the ones who make the value judgment. In the documentary about the African savannah, you see a lioness hunting a baby deer and it hurts. But soon the lioness will take this hunt to her babies, to her cubs. And there is a tender scene again. So, things balance out, both things are present in the world. Elas são o que são.
BBC News Brasil - You recently did a live with Carla Madeira. Já tinha se passado uma meia hora e havia cerca de 800 pessoas assistindo, o que me pareceu um número baixo para uma live gratuita que reunia uma escritora best-seller e você, que vem sendo festejada como "a atual sensação da cena literária brasileira". At the same time, this year's Book Biennial in São Paulo had huge queues at the stands. Are Brazilians interested in literature?
Tort - It would be really cool if people read more, but I don't feel comfortable saying that the problem is Brazilians who don't want to read. Because you have to catch, sorry, the f... driving at 4 in the morning. My pilates teacher leaves for work at 4:20 am every day because she lives very far away. Se você tem que pegar uma condução às quatro da manhã, passar o dia trabalhando, chegar em casa, dar uma atenção para o filho, botar uma roupa para lavar, fazer a comida, vai ser muito difícil que você tenha cabeça para ler.
There is the issue that, to read fiction, you need to have a certain reading fluency. It's not enough to be literate. You have to read fluidly to be able to concentrate on the story and enjoy it. And sometimes books are not available.
I don't think the issue is the price of the book, but rather that people are underpaid. There are no robust book and library acquisition policies. In Australia, if you are an author and have books in public libraries, you receive an incentive from the government because you are not selling them to have the book in the library. We need to strengthen all of this before pointing fingers at people. Obviously it's completely in my interest for people to read it. Although my family is not from a privileged financial situation, I was blessed to come from a family of readers, where I worked hard to pay for a book, because it was a value in my house.
Reading fiction is not to make you smarter or smarter, it is to exercise your sensitivity. I didn't come to literature thinking that it would take me somewhere or save me from something. We have to make sure that people like reading, that they have access to books, that they buy books, that they have their own library. The book is an object that can circulate within a house, it is passed down as an inheritance, it bears marks. You have an emotional relationship with this object that is not a mere consumer good. Buying books is not a waste or an excess.
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