I had no pleasure in meeting them

Novel by the author who won two Jabutis awards.

Constructed of short poetic fragments and often presented as epigrams or aphorisms, where the lapidary phrase is used as a basic constructive element, I Had No Pleasure in Meeting Them is a novel crafted with the meticulous attention of someone who sculpts or practices goldsmithing, a novel about the end of life, the rough stone used here to construct this precise and precious text.

In dialogue with the Romanian EM Cioran, who said that it was necessary to destroy in man his propensity for faith, any faith, and his monstrous faculty of being obsessed with a god, Evandro Affonso Ferreira presents, in this mosaic novel, a narrator almost devoid of faith like the one proposed by the Romanian – almost, because for this narrator there is still the consolation of Billie Holiday's music and the invention of phrases.

Evandro paints a somber picture of the nearness of death. He constructs a stained-glass window formed by fragments of the narrator's existence, which filter the gaze and are pierced by the observations of a powerful character who, even in his personal twilight, cultivates the human need to share—even if it is his own end.