CONTEMPORARY OF ME

The book "Contemporâneo de Mim" (Contemporary of Me), by Daniel Piza, brings together some of the most striking texts published during the first decade of the journalist's weekly column. "Sinopse"—which began in October 1996 in Gazeta Mercantil and, in May 2000, moved to O Estado de S. Paulo, where it remains today—was born, in the author's words, "with the idea of recording and analyzing this time, as if writing 'hot history,' in an attempt to sketch contexts and perspectives for each week's events." The title, "Contemporâneo de Mim," comes from the book's epigraph, a poem by Ferreira Gullar that serves as a warning about our inability to decipher, and invites us to reflect on contemporaneity. “Newspaper articles have a short lifespan,” writes Daniel Piza in the introduction, “although most books also fall into oblivion; the opportunity to read these texts together, in sequence (whichever the reader chooses), reinforces the hope that it is possible to make sense, or some senses, of the near-chaos in which we live.”