| Luiz Ruffato | |
| Birth Date: | 4 February 1961 |
| Birth Place: | Cataguases, Brazil |
| Occupation: | Journalist and writer |
| Language: | Portuguese |
| Alma Mater: | Federal University of Juiz de Fora |
| Period: | Contemporary |
| Genre: | Novelist |
Luiz Fernando Ruffato de Souza (born February 1961 in Cataguases) is a contemporary Brazilian writer.[1] An alumnus of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, Ruffato worked as a journalist in São Paulo and published several fiction books, including História dos Remorsos e Rancores (1998) and Eles eram muitos cavalos (They were many horses) (2001). The latter garnered the APCA literary prize.[2]
Ruffato is one of the founders of the Church of the Book as Transformation (Igreja do Livro Transformador).
Luiz Ruffato was born into an immigrant and working-class family in Cataguazes. Following the request of his mother, a Portuguese washerwoman, and his father, an Italian popcorn salesman,[3] Ruffato had an apprenticeship as a salesman in Cataguases before moving to Juiz de Fora. In Juiz de Fora, Ruffato worked as a mechanic and studied journalism.
Ruffato's first published work was the short story collection Histórias de Remorsos e Rancores (1998). Made up of seven short stories, Histórias de Remorsos e Rancores was centered on a set of characters from the "beco do Zé" (Zé's alley), in Cataguases. The short stories are not interrelated.[4]
In 2000, Ruffato published another collection of short stories, called os sobreviventes. The book received an honourable mention at the Premio Casa de las Américas in 2001. It is made of six short stories. The characters are meant to be representative of the lower proletariat of Cataguases; the stories deal with the suffering of the lower classes.[5]
Ruffato's first novel, Eles eram muitos cavalos, was published in 2001. It won the prize Troféu APCA of Prêmio Machado de Assis[6] for best novel of 2001. The novel's title is an allusion to a poem by the Brazilian poet Cecília Meirelles, Dos Cavalos da Inconfidência. The novel was a tribute to São Paulo.[7]
In 2005, Ruffato started—with the novel Mamma, Son Tanto Felice—a series called "Temporary Hell", made up of five volumes. The series continued with O Mundo Inimigo, published a year later. And, later on, Vista Parcial da Noite (2006), O Livro das Impossibilidades (2008), and Domingos sem Deus (2011). Ruffato's project fictionalized the story of the Brazilian working class from the beginning of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first century. According to Ruffato, this project was imagined before he had published his earlier novels.[8]
In 2007, Ruffato was invited to write for the collection "Amores Expressos", a collection of love stories published by Companhia das Letras, a Brazilian publishing houses.[9] Ruffato was invited to travel to Lisbon, Portugal. In 2009, he published the novel Estive em Lisboa e lembrei de você as the result.
In 2012, Luiz Ruffato was distinguished as a Brazilian Writer in Residence at the Center for Latin American Studies at UC Berkeley.[10] In 2013, his novel "Domingos Sem Deus" was awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize.