The Hours of Katharina: with the unpublished play The Swallow, or: God's Trap

Controversial, with a history of disagreements with Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and professors at USP, among others, Bruno Tolentino defined himself as a sharp-tongued writer bent by the vice of irony. He displayed no false modesty about his role in the Brazilian literary scene; he was aware of his own talent: "I changed the history of literature, I put Brazil on the international map," he declared. One of his best-known works, THE HOURS OF KATHARINA, was largely responsible for cementing his reputation as one of Brazil's leading contemporary authors. THE HOURS OF KATHARINA has now received an annotated reissue, with corrections and annotations, edited by Guilherme Malzoni. It also includes the beautiful and surprising previously unpublished play *A andorinha ou A scatada de Deus*, based on *As horas de Katharina*, which the poet was completing when he died in 2007 at the age of 66. The book's poems narrate the feelings experienced by the fictional Countess Elisabeth Katharina von Herzogenbuch—the author's alter ego—from her entry into the Discalced Carmelite Convent in Innsbruck, Tyrol, in 1880, at the age of 19, until her death in the same convent in 1927. More than the nun's conversion drama, Bruno Tolentino's poems exude the drama of a person faced with mystery. Katharina's Hours are a dialogue between conscience and temptations. Anguish and stupefaction, solitude and wonder, rebellion and sweetness, sadness and peace alternate in Katharina's readings of Gospel passages, emerging in her keen observation of formalism and false devotions. The entire book moves between immortal grace and immense pain. Powerful and contemporary, KATHARINA'S HOURS proves the vigor of the poet's creative legacy, which earned him important Brazilian awards.