Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life is the definitive, authorized biography of one of the world's most popular and widely read authors--and the story of how his enormously popular novel The Alchemist came to be. Fernando Morais, the preeminent biographer in Brazil and a groundbreaking journalist, traces Coelho's roots in Brazil to his time as a musician and pop lyricist to his wild days of rock and roll to the publication of the The Alchemist and beyond, telling the true tale of one of the most adored authors of our time.
Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life is the definitive, authorized biography of one of the world's most popular and widely read authors--and the story of how his enormously popular novel The Alchemist came to be. Fernando Morais, the preeminent biographer in Brazil and a groundbreaking journalist, traces Coelho's roots in Brazil to his time as a musician and pop lyricist to his wild days of rock and roll to the publication of the The Alchemist and beyond, telling the true tale of one of the most adored authors of our time.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, violent anti-Castro groups based in Florida carried out hundreds of military attacks on Cuba, bombing hotels and shooting up Cuban beaches with machine guns. The Cuban government struck back with the Wasp Network-a dozen men and two women-sent to infiltrate those organizations.The Last Soldiers of the Cold War tells the story of those unlikely Cuban spies and their eventual unmasking and prosecution by US authorities. Five of the Cubans received long or life prison terms on charges of espionage and murder. Global best-selling Brazilian author Fernando Morais narrates the riveting tale of the Cuban Five in vivid, page-turning detail, delving into the decades-long conflict between Cuba and the US, the growth of the powerful Cuban exile community in Florida, and a trial that eight Nobel Prize winners condemned as a travesty of justice.The Last Soldiers of the Cold War is both a real-life spy thriller and a searching examination of the Cold War's legacy.
One of seven children raised in abject poverty by a single parent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva acquired his politics on the hard road of personal suffering, inspired by the selfless example of his mother. He started work at the age of eight and didn't learn to read for another two years. At twenty, he lost his wife and child. A union organizer in the 1980s, when Brazil still languished under military dictatorship, Lula helped form the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT or Brazilian Workers' Party). His first steps in politics were faltering. He came last running for governor of São Paulo and would have retreated from electoral politics entirely were it not for the intercession of Fidel Castro.More setbacks were to follow, but in 2003 Lula was elected president. He became one of the most popular politicians not only in Brazilian history but on the planet. His seven years in office saw millions of his compatriots lifted out of poverty. Disqualified from running for president in 2018, he was subsequently sentenced to nine and a half years in prison. That sentence was quashed in 2019, allowing Lula to defeat Jair Bolsonaro and win a third term.Leading Brazilian journalist Fernando Morais has enjoyed direct, frank, and frequent access to his subject for decades. The result is a biography that paints a human portrait of grandeur and complexity.
Fernando Morais’ Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindo Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan’s victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil’s fraught racial democracy.
Fernando Morais’ Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindo Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan’s victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil’s fraught racial democracy.
Olga Benario, German and Jewish, was one of the most remarkable Communist activists of the twentieth century. Blessed with a genius for organization and an unwavering devotion, the beautiful, willful daughter of a liberal Munich lawyer crisscrossed the globe educating and activating legions to combat the worldwide plagues of nazism and fascism. At the age of nineteen, she masterminded a daring prison raid to free her then-lover, the Communist intellectual Otto Braun. Together they escaped to Moscow, where they quickly rose in the ranks of the international Communist movement. At twenty-six, she was chosen to serve as bodyguard to the legendary Brazilian Communist guerrilla leader Luis Carlos Prestes, who has been brought to Moscow for training and will soon become her lover. Traveling under assumed names, they crossed Europe and North and South America to reach Brazil, where Prestes would launch a revolution against the Fascist regime. Within months, they were seized by police. After six months of tirelessly continuing her activism from within Brazilian prisons, Olga, now seven months pregnant, was classified as extremely dangerous and was deported to the Nazi Germany. She was subsequently sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, and in February of 1942, she was sent to her death in the gas chambers at Bernburg. Reissued to coincide with a new film adaptation by the producers of "City of God," Olga is "a heartbreaking biography [that] is filled with high drama" (Publishers Weekly). "[Olga's] hunger for adventure, her sheer force of character, her passion and courage, called her to a strange and tragic destiny. . . . The saga of Olga Benario is aflame with the telltale glow of an author who has fallen hopelessly in love with his subject. Morais tells Benario's story so vividly, so convincingly, that we can readily understand why." -Los Angeles Times Book Review Fernando Morais is a journalist who also served as Minister of Culture for Sao Paulo province.
