August Willemsen (1936-2007) was a leading literary translator and man of letters. Among the major Portuguese and Brazilian writers he translated are Fernando Pessoa, Machado de Assis and Carlos Drummond de Andrade; he also published essays, diaries and letters. His books include Language as a Pair of Spectacles, 1987, Friends, Strangers and Women, 1998, and The Divine Canary, 2007, a socio-cultural sketch of Brazil in the light of its love of football.
(De Arbeiderspers, 1985, 283 pages)
August Willemsen arrived in Sao Paulo in 1967 as a Dutch student aiming to study Brazilian literature, having set sail for South America armed with a small grant and a few letters of recommendation. In his twenties, optimistic, eager (drinker and) socializer and fluent in Portuguese: Willemsen was all set for his intellectual voyage of exploration in the new world, in a city buzzing with energy. What could possibly go wrong?
(De Arbeiderspers, 2007, 304 pages)
The Netherlands has been a world-class footballing nation since the early 1970s, but only in the past twenty years has a tradition of football literature sprung up. Oddly, the best of them, The Divine Canary, is not a book about Dutch soccer but a compelling socio-cultural sketch of Brazil in the light of its love of football.
