Body of Nélida Piñon should arrive in Brazil next week, says ABL

The Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) reported that the transfer of the body of academic Nélida Piñon to Brazil is in the final stage of bureaucracy. “At the moment, we are working with a forecast to receive it between the next Monday and Wednesday”, said the institution, through its press office. The writer Nélida Piñon died at the age of 85, last Saturday (17), in Lisbon, Portugal, where she had been for three months and where she was operated on to treat gallbladder problems. The body will be laid to rest at ABL’s Petit Trianon and buried in the institution’s Mausoleum, at Cemitério São João Batista, in Botafogo, in the south zone of Rio de Janeiro. On the 2nd of March, the academy will hold a Session of Saudade in honor of the writer, who was the first woman to preside over the institution, from 1996 to 1997. During the event, the candidacy stage for chair 30 will be declared open , occupied until then by the author from Rio de Janeiro, born on May 3, 1937. Nélida was elected to the ABL on July 27, 1989, becoming the fifth occupant of chair 30. She took office on May 3, 1990, being received by Lêdo Ivo. Her work encompasses several literary genres, such as novels, short stories, chronicles, among others, and has been translated into more than 30 languages. She graduated in journalism from the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC Rio). Her first novel, Guia-mala de Gabriel Arcanjo, was published in 1961. She won the Jabuti Prize twice and was the first woman to receive the Juan Rulfo International Prize for Literature, considered the most important in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2005, Nélida won the Príncipe de Asturias de Las Letras, Spain’s highest literature award.

Agência Brasil