Beatriz Bracher’s novel I Didn’t Talk represents the English-language debut of a master stylist: a compassionate but relentless novel about the long, dark harvest of Brazil’s totalitarian rule. As a professor prepares to retire from São Paulo to the countryside, it isn’t the urban violence he’s fleeing: what he fears most is the violence of his memory. Arrested and tortured by Brazil’s military regime in 1970, along with a close friend, he was eventually released, while his friend was killed. No one is certain that he didn’t turn traitor. I didn’t talk, he tells himself, yet as Bracher honors his endless pain, what burns this tour de force so indelibly in the reader’s mind is the intensely controlled voice.

Along with her English-language translator Adam Morris, Bracher discusses her book and her country’s history with Eric Becker, editor of Words Without Borders, followed by a wine reception hosted by the Consulate General of Brazil in New York.

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2018 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT