The Head of the Saint (17 page)

My original ideas for this novel were written in 2006 for the “How to Tell a Story” screenwriting workshop led by Gabriel García Márquez at the Escuela de Cine y TV at San Antonio de los Baños, in Cuba, between the second and fifth of December.

The praise, enthusiasm and encouragement I received from García Márquez around this project were fundamental to its completion, and so I begin my thanks with him. More than that: this book is for him. I am also grateful to EICTV, to María Julia and to Alquimia, for the chance to be part of the final group to participate in this prestigious workshop.

Many thanks to Paulo Linhares, Bete Jaguaribe and Orlando Senna and to the Ministry of Culture's Programme for Cultural Dissemination and Exchange. To my highly experienced and talented coursemates: Ana Maria Parra (Colombia), Juan Pablo Bustamante (Colombia), Ernesto Villalobos (Costa Rica), Lien Lau (Cuba), Karina Narpier (Dominican Republic), Joaquín Guerrero Casasola (Mexico), Christian Ayala Alonso (Spain), Rocío Santillana (Peru) and our teacher, Fernando León de Aranoa.

I would also like to thank my friends Luciana Cruz, Mariana Cordiviolla, Janaína Marques, Marcus Moura, Rita Célia Faheina, Manoella Monteiro, Samuel Macedo, Fátima Souza, Sheila Jacob, Silvia Jacob, Lira Neto, Lula Buarque de Hollanda, Letícia Monte, Lilian Contreira, Regina Ribeiro, Fernanda Coutinho, Luciana Gifoni, Frei Betto, Natália Guerellus and Joana Medrado, the teachers Robert McKee and Guillermo Arriaga, Ary Leite, Thelma Leite, Cintia Figueiredo, Tiago Coutinho, Luciana Limaverde, Nícia Barroso, João Daniel Almeida, Paloma Jorge Amado, Cecília Amado, Ana Márcia Diógenes, Rosângela Primo, the Alencar family, the Acioli family, Sarah Odedina and Isabel Lopes Coelho.

I am grateful to professors Lívia Reis (my supervisor), Eurídice Figueiredo and Victor Hugo, who assessed this work for the qualifying exam for the Doctorate in Literary Studies at Universidade Federal Fluminense, shining the necessary light on it to develop the novel and bring it to the next stage.

To Dauna Vale, who took me to visit the real head of the saint, in Caridade.

To Neda Blythman and João Marcelo Melo, for their welcome in Cape Verde.

To the careful and incisive reading from my dear friend Julia Bussius, my editor at Companhia das Letras, whose work was crucial for this book.

To Diana Passy, Nathália Dimambro and Clara Dias, for the warm welcome in their new home.

To the voice of Mayra Andrade, whose music was the sound track to the writing of this book.

To my dear agent and friend, Lucia Riff, for all her support and encouragement.

And to José Marcos and Beatriz, my family, for this love that we share, which grows every day.

Daniel Hahn is a British writer, editor, and translator. He is the author of a number of works of nonfiction, including the history book
The Tower Menagerie,
and is one of the editors of
The Ultimate Book Guide,
a series of reading guides for children and teenagers, the first volume of which won the Blue Peter Book Award.

His translation of
The Book of Chameleons
by José Eduardo Agualusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. A former chair of the Translators Association, he is the national program director of the British Centre for Literary Translation and a trustee of the free expression charity English PEN.

Socorro Acioli was born in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil. She is a journalist and has a master's degree in Brazilian literature and a PhD in literary studies. She started her writing career in 2001 and since then has published books in various genres, including children's short stories and YA novels, and has received Brazil's most prestigious prize for children's literature, the Jabuti Prize.

In 2006, she was selected to take part in a workshop conducted by Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. The author was selected by García Márquez himself based on her synopsis for
The Head of the Saint.
In 2007, she was a visiting researcher at a university in Germany, and she has lectured in several other countries, including Portugal, Bolivia, and Cape Verde. Acioli is also a translator, essayist, and literary theory teacher.