Carlos Heitor Cony

Carlos Heitor Cony (March 14, 1926 – January 5, 2018) was a Brazilian journalist and writer. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Portuguese: Academia Brasileira de Letras).

Cony viewed himself as center-leftist and faced persecution under the military government in the 1960s. Four of his works were adapted to movies. He was a columnist at the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.

Cony died in Rio de Janeiro on January 5, 2018, of multiple organ failure at the age of 91.

Biography

Son of the journalist Ernesto Cony Filho, considered "obscure," and Julieta Moraes Cony, Carlos Heitor Cony grew up in the Lins de Vasconcelos neighborhood, when he spoke his first words reacting to a noise caused by a seaplane in Niterói. Due to this problem, which was only resolved when the writer was 15 years old through surgery, until 1945, abandoning it before ordination as a priest. The following year, he began studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Brazil, but interrupted the course in 1947, and had his first experience as a journalist at the Jornal do Brasil covering his father's vacation.

He worked as a public servant of the Rio de Janeiro City Council until 1952, when he became an editor at the Rádio Jornal do Brasil. and quickly came to oppose the coup openly, being arrested six times during the military regime. As an editorialist for Correio da Manhã, he wrote critical pieces about the acts of the military dictatorship, which were compiled into a book, O Ato e o Fato, released still in 1964.

After facing eight lawsuits, three inquiries, and being arrested six times for "opinion offenses," When he returned to Brazil the following year, he was invited by entrepreneur Adolpho Bloch to work on the magazines published by Bloch Editores. During much of his time at Bloch, between 1968 and 2000, he set aside fiction literature. He published his last fiction book in 1973, Pilatos. Dedicating himself almost entirely to journalism, he was a columnist, special reporter, and editor of publications like Manchete, Desfile, Fatos&Fotos and Ele Ela.

In 1993, Cony was invited by journalist Jânio de Freitas to return to writing for Folha de S.Paulo, taking over the "Rio" column, previously occupied by writer Otto Lara Rezende. The first column in Folha was published on March 14 of that year. Cony wrote for the newspaper until his death. After 22 years away from fiction literature, in 1995, he released Quase Memória, a book that marked his return to the genre and became one of his most famous works after selling over 400,000 copies, also receiving the Jabuti Prize in 1996 in the category Book of the Year – Fiction.

Cony received a controversial pension from the federal government due to legislation that authorizes payment of compensation to those who suffered material and moral damages during the military dictatorship.

In 2013, the writer suffered a fall at the Frankfurt Book Fair, causing the presence of a clot in his brain. Weakened by the accident and lymphoma cancer that had accompanied him since 2001,

Works Source:

Novels

1958 – O Ventre 1959 – A Verdade de Cada Dia 1960 – Tijolo de Segurança 1961 – Informação ao Crucificado 1962 – Matéria de Memória 1964 – Antes, o Verão 1965 – Balé Branco 1967 – Pessach: A Travessia 1973 – Pilatos 1995 – Quase Memória 1996 – O Piano e a Orquestra 1997 – A casa do Poeta Trágico 1999 – Romance sem Palavras 2001 – O Indigitado 2003 – A Tarde da sua Ausência 2006 – O Adiantado da Hora 2007 – A Morte e a Vida 2022 – Paixão segundo Mateus

Chronicles

1963 – Da Arte de Falar Mal 1964 – O Ato e o Fato 1965 – Posto Seis 1998 – Os Anos mais Antigos do Passado 1999 – O Harém das Bananeiras 2002 – O Suor e a Lágrima 2004 – O Tudo ou o Nada 2009 – Para ler na Escola