Caio Fernando Abreu’s 70th Birthday

Born on this day in 1948 in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, Caio Fernando Abreu is one of his country’s most celebrated contemporary writers, whose work explored the LGBTQ+ experience and sensitive themes such as loneliness, alienation, and AIDS.

Abreu studied dramatic arts in college and worked as an editor and pop culture journalist before focusing on writing stories, novels, and plays. In 1975 he won honorable mention in a national fiction contest, but he is best known for his collection of stories Os dragões não conhecem o paraíso, which translates from Portuguese as “Dragons do not know the paradise.” First published in 1987, it was eventually translated into French and English and retitled simply ‘Dragons...’

I’ve got a dragon living with me.

No, it’s not true.

I haven’t really got a dragon. And even if I did have, he wouldn’t live with me.

These enigmatic and evocative lines from ‘Dragons…’ reflect the central theme of this work. In Abreu’s fiction “Dragons” represent individuals living at the margins of society—drag queens, gay teens, bisexual men, and a range of others —unknowable, lonely, powerful, untamable, invisible, and perceived by the mainstream as dangerous. Today’s Doodle pays tribute to Abreu’s courageous and compassionate spirit, and his insightful and emotionally charged body of work.

Like many Brazilian artists and writers at the time he ran afoul of the DOPS, the "Department for Political and Social Order," a government agency that maintained files on anyone considered a potential enemy of the state. His novel Onde Andara Dulce Veiga (Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga?) won the Best Novel award in 2000 from the São Paulo Association of Art Critics and he won won three Jabuti Prizes, Brazil’s most prestigious literary honor. Two of Abreu's short stories were adapted into films and plays, and his novel Onde Andará Dulce Veiga became a 2008 feature film, directed by his friend Guilherme de Almeida Prado.

Happy Birthday Caio Fernando Abreu!