Geographic Sensibility and Personal Landscapes: A Profile of Brazilian Writer Claudia Nina

Claudia Nina is fascinated by the relationship between people and landscapes. She writes constantly, but patiently waits for the right moment to publish. Her tips for fellow writers? Serenity and humility: to write without any hurry and to accept that not everything one writes will be brilliant. This is a lesson she learned not only from her own clashes with words, but also from witnessing battles faced by fellow writers. As a columnist for Reader’s Digest in Brazil (Seleções), Claudia Nina reviews new works of Brazilian literature. She is also the former editor of Jornal do Brasil’s legendary—and now extinct—culture supplement “Ideias e Livros.” Her experience as a journalist was, in her opinion, the best writing training she could ever have received. As a journalist, Nina learned that any text needs to—and must—be edited: “[Writing is] a constant game of balance, holding the word at the end of the bar, like a tightrope walker” (Nina, “Paisagens literárias”; all translations are mine).

Claudia Nina’s literary models are as varied as her traveling destinations: the Portuguese writers José Saramago and Valter Hugo Mãe, the Argentines Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, and the Italian Antonio Tabucchi. Among her compatriots, Nina lists Caio Fernando Abreu and Hilda Hilst as interlocutors, and recognizes Clarice Lispector as the strongest voice in her work. She confesses, “Of course, I am very careful not to fall into the trap of trying to write like Clarice. I am not naïve enough to do that, [but] I read all her work and I cannot get rid of her” (“Entrevista”). Writing fiction has always been Claudia Nina’s secret passion, but she waited for the perfect moment to venture into the novel. She did not want to get ahead of herself: “I needed to feel my intimate timing and to be ready for this radical plunge. Because fiction, for me, is a very deep plunge,” she explains (“Entrevista”).

Her incursion into fiction happened in 2010, with the children’s book A barca dos feiosos, a fable about diversity and intolerance. For Nina, writing for children is both a fascination and a challenge, as it demands great clarity and transparency. In her works for children, she achieves the perfect balance between objectivity and lyricism, while addressing complex topics such as fear (Nina e a lamparina, 2013); solidarity in the face of tragedy (A misteriosa mansão do misterioso senhor Lam, 2015); and ambivalence toward change (A Repolheira, 2015). (Figure 1) Nina finds it easier to communicate with young readers than with adults. “Perhaps because, as an adult, I am my biggest censor. I annihilate myself quite often,” she justifies (“Paisagens literárias”). But these challenges and concerns did not stop her from venturing into adult fiction. In 2012, she published her first novel, Esquecer-te de mim, which uncovers the topic of loneliness through three female protagonists who experience abandonment in different ways: widowhood, divorce, and a breakup.

Figure 1.

Cover of A Repolheira, 2015. Courtesy: Claudia Nina.

In 2014, Nina transformed her personal experience as a graduate student in the Netherlands into fiction in Paisagem de porcelana, which was one of the finalists of the prestigious Prêmio Rio de Literatura. The title of the novel makes reference to the famous Delft pottery, the white and blue porcelain made in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century, and underlines the monotonous, impermeable, and barren nature of the protagonist’s surroundings. The novel has been interpreted as a love story in which one “forgets to love oneself ” (Tavares); as the account of a life with chronic depression (Montone); and as an individual’s personal journey through the other (Bessa). Paisagem de porcelana tells the story of Helena, a twenty-five-year-old Brazilian woman who moves to the Netherlands to study and also explore new sceneries. “I was tired of Brazil, I cannot remember exactly why, but it is too much to expect: that I would remember a past before a past,” ponders the protagonist...