Peirene Press acquires family saga by the late Victor Heringer

Peirene Press has snapped up Glória, a “family saga like no other” by the Brazilian author Victor Heringer, who died in 2018.

Co-publisher James Tookey acquired world English rights from Alberto Del Bono and Cecilia Ranieri at Redondo Books. The book will be published on 23rd July. 

Translated from Portuguese by James Young and Sophie Lewis, Glória won the 2013 Jabuti Prize and tells the story of three brothers. “The Alencar Costa e Oliveira family talk to each other in inside jokes, often saying the opposite of what they mean, or repeating the same sentence until it acquires new meaning,” the synopsis says. “But they also have a dark inheritance: every member of the family has died of the same cause – acute melancholy. Equal parts postmodern, tender and satirical, Glória follows three brothers – Benjamin, Daniel and Abel – as they do battle with online forums, religious hysteria, the art world of Rio de Janeiro, ants, aunts, love, humiliation and a stammering God.”

The author was born in Rio de Janeiro and died three weeks before his 30th birthday in 2018. He had previously published a poetry collection, automatógrafo (7Letras). His début novel, Glória (7Letras), was followed by The Love of Singular Men (Companhia das Letra/ Peirene Press), which was shortlisted for the São Paulo Prize for Literature, the Rio Prize for Literature and the Oceanos Prize. 

Tookey said: “It is a genuine privilege to be bringing Victor Heringer’s fiction into English. His voice – translated so beautifully by James Young and Sophie Lewis – is one of the strongest and most exciting I’ve come across in 21st-century writing. And Glória is Heringer on full beam: moving, playful, curious, sexy, satirical... he could do it all.”