João Paulo Cuenca

Career

João Paulo Cuenca was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1978. He is the author of “Body present” (2003), “The Mastroianni Day” (2007), “The only happy ending for a love story is an accident” (2010) and “The day I found out I was dead” (2015). His novels have been translated into eight languages and had its rights sold to eleven countries so far. He is a weekly columinst for major Brazilian newspapers and magazines since 2003 and now writes for Folha de São Paulo, the biggest national newspaper. An anthology of his articles, “The last dawn”, was published in 2012.

In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival and by the organisers of the Bogotá World Book Capital as one of the 39 highest profile Latin American writers under the age of 39. He has also been selected for the very first ever issue Best of Young Brazilian Novelists of the literary magazine Granta in 2012. In recent years, he's been writing plays, film and television scripts. "The Death of J.P. Cuenca" (2015), which took part at the first Venice Biennale College Production Lab, is his first feature film as a writer/director and was premiered at Rio and São Paulo International Film Festivals and had its European premiere at main competition selection of the prestigious CPH:DOX in Denmark.

He participated in lectures as a guest writer in PUC-Rio (2004), UFRJ (2004), Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris III (2006), Columbia University (2011), Princeton University (2011, 2014), Heidelberg University (2012), Salzburg University (2012), Yale University (2014), Brown University (2013, 2014), UCLA (2014), Stanford (2014), University of Illinois (2014), among many others. He was invited to festivals such as Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias (Colombia, 2008, 2013), Berlin International Literature Festival (2012, 2013), Frankfurt Book Fair (2012, 2013), Xalapa Hay Festival in Mexico (2012), Guadalajara Book Fair (2012), London Brazilian Festival (2010), Americas Society Symposium on Brazilian Literature (New York, 2011), Festival Vivamerica (Madrid, 2011), Correntes d'Escritas (Portugal, 2008, 2009, 2011) etc. He was the chief curator of the Bahia Book Fair in 2013 and of the Belo Horizonte Book Fair in 2014. He Won a Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship in 2013 and was a Writer-in-Residence at the Programa Avançado de Cultura Contemporânea of UFRJ (PACC) in 2014.

In 2003, Cuenca published his first novel »Corpo Presente« (tr: Body Present), which depicts a man’s radical descent into his own obsessions. In seductive Copacabana, the narrator goes through days, streets and women on a search for a lost or impossible love affair, looking for feelings that have been lost forever in a world that has become too cynical, too violent, too sexualised. An idealist in his own way, he searches for purity by dirtying himself in the precarious moments that life presents him with. This novel was reedited by Companhia das Letras in 2013 and is set to be published in Argentina and Sweden in 2016. In 2007, his second, very successful novel »O Dia Mastroianni« (The Mastroianni Day) was published in Brazil and subsequently released in Italy in 2008, in Portugal in 2009 and in Germany in 2013. This generational novel is based on the idea of two friends who take the legendary Italian actor as their role model, enjoying the moment, the pleasures of women, and life itself as modern dandies in a 24 hours spiral. Cuenca’s most recent novel, »O único final feliz para uma história de amor é um acidente« (2012; tr: The Only Happy Ending to a Love Story is an Accident) is set in present-day Tokyo and tells the story of Shunsuke and his complicated relationship with his father, Mr Okuda, whose hobby is spying on his son. When Sunshuke falls in love with Iulana, a maelstrom of jealousy is set in motion that culminates in abduction and death. In poetic and imaginative language, Cuenca subtly interweaves reality and fiction, creating a world whose palpable characters leave a lasting impression. Written rather like a crime novel, full of odd events and reminiscent of Haruki Murakami, this story draws the reader in from the very first page. »O único final feliz para uma história de amor é um acidente« has been published in the United States, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Finland and Romania.

Besides writing books, Cuenca worked as a journalist and columnist for various major Brazilian newspapers and magazines, among them »O Globo«. An anthology of his chronicles and columns appeared only recently in the volume »A última madrugada« (2012; tr: The last dawn). João Paulo Cuenca’s texts have already appeared in anthologies inside and outside of Brazil.

Novels

Chronicles

Anthologies

Translated publications

Film

In 2008 a corpse was identified by the police with the birth certificate of the writer João Paulo Cuenca in an invaded building in Lapa, downtown Rio de Janeiro. Inspired by this fact, “The Death of J.P. Cuenca” investigates the identity-theft case in a phantasmagoric city undergoing a lot of changes.

A true story about doppelgangers and identity theft, as if taken out of a delirious piece of pulp literature, and a plot that Cuenca tries to solve while also embellishing the fiction of his labyrinthine meta-docu-noir of a debut film. Where a living person would otherwise adopt a dead man's identity to start a new life, the opposite is the case here: a man steals another person's identity to die in his place. Interviews with those involved, mysterious telephone calls and a steamy love affair with a mysterious woman all take place against an urban and modernist background of a Rio de Janeiro undergoing great changes in the run-up to the football World Cup, where the bulldozers of gentrification are well underway to eradicate the city's history. Cuenca's autobiographic detective film is a Chinese box of stories, which like in a short story by Borges is made up of deceitful layers. Composed like a work of architecture, edited like a text and presented as a film.

TV