Life is urgent

Urgent is Life is the result of a careful selection of Alcione Araújo's chronicles. The book responds to numerous requests from readers who would like to see the author's best texts gathered together. The chronicles in this collection share Alcione's keen sense of observation. "I've always been an observer, but after becoming a columnist, I became more attentive to what's happening around me. Soon, the activity became a pleasure. I close my eyes and let the subject take over me," says the author. A renowned screenwriter and playwright, Alcione Araújo is the author of the acclaimed novel Nem mesmo todo o oceano (Not Even the Whole Ocean), which, along with Urgent is Life and his playwriting—published by Civilização Brasileira—reveals the writer's many facets and gifts. "There isn't one Alcione who writes films, another who writes novels, or another who writes plays. Everything has been metabolized. It's the same man, with the same history and the same background," he reveals. Displaced from their original setting, the chronicles selected for this book abandon their transience—the pages of the newspaper Estado de Minas—to enter the literary world, thus receiving the enduring status that literature confers upon them. In Urgente é a Vida, Alcione doesn't overdo the lurid and scandalous, serving up a menu of psychosocial and political-historical ills through the lens of everyday scenes.