Saving the Fire

Mois-s lives with his father and sister in a Brazilian village dominated by the local monastery. His mother having died mysteriously, Mois-s is raised by his sister Luzia, a young woman rumored to be a witch and despised by the villagers. Luzia seeks protection from the monastery, where she gets a job as a laundress and where Mois-s receives an education. In time, something triggers her brother to rebel and run away from home. Luzia finds herself wholly alone, fighting for the family's land and for her life. Unknown to her, Mois-s, too, has put himself on the front line of an ancient conflict between colonial oppressors and the dispossessed. Epic and lyrical, with the power to enchant as well as outrage, Saving the Fire presents the ghosts of a family's past lost amid the shadows of a nation's history. Masterfully, Itamar Vieira Junior blends the intimate journeys of his characters with faithfully rendered elements of Brazilian life in a world where the scars of colonialism still ache.

Itamar Vieira Junior was born in Salvador, Brazil, in 1979. He holds a doctorate in Ethnic and Africana Studies. His debut novel Crooked Plow won the 2018 LeYa Award (Portugal) and the 2020 Jabuti Award for Best Novel (Brazil). The book has sold over a million copies in Brazil, and the English translation was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize. His second novel, Saving the Fire, won the 2024 Jabuti Award for Best Novel. Johnny Lorenz, born in 1972, son of Brazilian immigrants to the US, is a translator, poet and Professor at Montclair State University. He translated Clarice Lispector's A Breath of Life and The Besieged City. His translation of Itamar Vieira Junior's Crooked Plow received support from the National Endowment for the Arts.