The endless body

A family story ready to be remembered and resurrected. A mother tortured and taken from her son's arms. A family that was never the same again. Claudia Lage's "The Endless Body " dares to delicately touch on wounds opened during the military dictatorship and makes us realize that time doesn't always heal, as it still hurts many people.

In search of his origins, Daniel attempts to reconstruct the story of his mother, a guerrilla fighter who disappeared during Brazil's civil-military dictatorship. Attempts to reconstruct his personal history alongside the history of his country and the broken threads of memory shape the narrative. As he searches for information about his mother, other stories emerge, or other possible stories, also missing, of so many women. Claudia Lage wrote a book about absence and also about writing, this (im)possibility of reinventing and remaking oneself through words.

"I wear a loose maternity dress, I imagine a nonexistent belly, I puff out my abdomen, the child I will never have is already a presence. It is a body that is born extinct, not even a body, but an idea that died in thought, without becoming matter, or an emotion, just an emotion that did not find its gesture. I say these words, but perhaps I was a baby in my arms, I imagine the birth, was it beautiful, was it painful? Was I in the hospital, in prison, or here? I imagine the joy of having a child, I imagine the pain of losing. I try to feel, to bear this joy, this pain, but my belly deflates like a balloon of gas, it cannot sustain the emptiness."

"Beatings, rapes, torn-out nails, shocks, psychological torture, the loss of children, death itself, and the orphanhood that continues the pain, often without a body, without mourning. There are so many women, so many different stories, in different times, superimposed in a narrative that pulls readers into the scene and makes us ask "what now?" Skilled in handling her tools, the author controls the emotions and expectations of her reader, without offering answers that eliminate possibilities for the future." - Regina Dalcastagnè.