The dance of hair

Novel winner of the Guimarães Rosa and Sarney Law awards Besides being a beautiful novel, A dança dos cabelo can also be considered a delicate embroidery, a fine lace of words woven from the memories of three Isauras: grandmother, mother, and daughter. It is the lives of these women, stitched together into a single fabric, that compose the fabric of a story that seduces and captivates the reader from the beginning. Isaura had and raised fourteen children by the man who killed her entire family, and one day, fulfilling her destiny, she threw herself into the waters of the Suaçuí River. Isaura waited for more than twenty years for her man to return to the world. Isaura tells us of a train in distant countries, heading for the cold lands. Each of these Isauras has her own story, or rather, her own countless stories. But as we travel through time with the text, we discover that they are also a single woman. A holy trinity formed by the violent inheritance, the mark on the forehead, that each woman carries from her mother. A legacy of blood, of fear, of sex. The text—like the story—is itself a puzzle, the kind that, well-assembled by the reader, results in new landscapes for our eyes weary of the commonplace. A text full of poetry and a strong rhythm. Of an almost fantastical quality that slips into reality and blends with it.