Sobre o Sebastopol, no site do Brazilian Publishers:
The year of 2020 has been a great year for Emilio Fraia so far. After having the rights of his book Sebastopol sold for an adaptation to the big screen, the Brazilian writer now has his work arriving on the shelves of Swedish bookshops. The title is being released in that country by Tranan, a traditional publisher. The company has already published books by writers like Clarice Lispector, Jorge Luis Borges, and Roberto Bolaño. In Brazil, Sebastopol was published by the imprint Alfaguara, owned by Companhia das Letras, a member of Brazilian Publishers — an industry project fostering the exports of Brazilian editorial content by means of a partnership between the Brazilian Book Chamber and the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil).
The book is also being translated into English, and in 2021 it will be released by American publisher New Directions. Sebastopol is divided into three short stories that work independently but are subtly connected to one another somehow. “The seed of what became one of such stories was sowed back in 2012, in a short story selected and published in Granta magazine”, said the author in an interview to the Brazilian Publishers website. That issue of the British magazine chose the best Brazilian writers under 40 years old, and one of them was Emilio Fraia.
In the first story, a female climber decides to climb the Everest and suffers an accident that changes her life forever. Years later, she finds a video in which an artist (her ex-boyfriend) seems to be narrating her story. In the second story, set in the Midwest region of Brazil, a man goes to an abandoned inn and then vanishes. The reader slowly discovers the history of that man. In the third and last story, a young woman, together with an old theater director, writes about a Russian painter who has never finished one of his most famous paintings. The artist lived during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855), the main battle during the Crimean War, which involved some Western powerful countries against the Tsarist Russia in the 19th Century.
Sebastopol was one of the winners of the Brazilian National Library Award (3rd place) and shortlisted for the Jabuti and Oceanos Awards. Last year, one of its three stories was also published in the December issue of The New Yorker magazine.
Emilio is one of the 30 artists selected for the residency program of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, located in a castle in the Umbria region, in Italy. The writer was chosen among 165 candidates.
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Sebastopol (Sevastopol, 2018), Emilio Fraia’s successful book, is taking over the world. After he has signed contracts to have his work released in Sweden and the United States, where translations are being produced, the Brazilian writer is having the title published in the United Kingdom, too.
According to Emilio, independent publisher Lolli Editions has shown interest in the story and decided to take it to the UK bookshops. The company had the first contact with his work by means of the anthology “Tools for Extinction”, to which he wrote a short story. “The publisher in charge of the anthology, Denise Rose Hansen, selected writers I admire a lot. It was an honor to me to be part of it. The idea was to try to reflect, in the heat of the moment, on the world of uncertainties, fear and social distancing we began to live in”, explains Fraia.
Excited about the opportunity, Emilio says Lolli is a publishing house that is “strongly connected with the world of arts”, and although it is an independent company, it has a good space reserved in the bookshops at the Barbican Centre, in London. “Lolli editions are beautiful and I am really thrilled with the release”, adds the author.
The date for the release of Sebastopol in the UK has not been set yet, but it is expected to be published by 2021.
Sebastopol includes three short stories that work independently but are subtly connected to one another somehow. In the first story, a female climber decides to climb the Everest and suffers an accident that changes her life forever. Years later, she finds a video in which an artist (her ex-boyfriend) seems to be narrating her story.
In the second story, set in the Midwest region of Brazil, a man goes to an abandoned inn and then vanishes. The reader slowly discovers the history of that man. In the third and last story, a young woman, together with an old theater director, writes about a Russian painter who has never finished one of his most famous paintings.
Sebastopol was one of the winners of the Brazilian National Library Award (3rd place) and shortlisted for the Jabuti and Oceanos Awards. Last year, one of its three stories was also published in the December issue of The New Yorker magazine.
Besides being published abroad, Emilio Fraia was also selected for the Shanghai Writing Program, a literature residency program created in 2008 in China. “I am glad that I’m going to have the chance of writing in a country that has a very unique culture”, he completes.
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