Silviano Santiago

Silviano Santiago is a Brazilian novelist, critic, and essayist born in 1936 in Formiga, Minas Gerais. He is one of the most intellectually distinguished figures in Brazilian literary culture, known both as a novelist and as the formulator of influential theoretical concepts, particularly the notion of the 'entre-lugar' (in-between-place) of Latin American literature. Santiago spent years studying and teaching in France and the United States, and this cosmopolitan experience has shaped both his fiction and his critical thinking. His major works of fiction include Em liberdade (1981), a controversial biographical novel written in the voice of Graciliano Ramos, Stella Manhattan (1985), and Keith Jarrett no Blue Note (1996). His critical essays have been enormously influential in Brazilian literary studies. He received the Prémio Camões in 2022, recognizing a lifetime of creative and intellectual achievement that has helped define the terms in which Brazilian and Latin American literature understands itself. Santiago is regarded as one of the great living Brazilian intellectuals, a figure whose work exemplifies the possibility of combining rigorous theoretical thinking with literary creativity.