Ignacio de Loyola Brandao

Who is Ignacio de Loyola Brandao?

Ignacio de Loyola Brandão is a Brazilian born writer perhaps best known as the science fiction author of the dystopian novel Zero, the story of Brazil in the 1960s under a totalitarian regime. In his career he has won the Prêmio Jabuti.

Brandão moved from his small city to São Paulo, the capital, when he was twenty and worked at a newspaper, Última Hora. He "familiarized himself with [...] the geographical idiosyncrasies of the metropolis and the complex political issues of the day" over the next eight years until the 1964 coup d'etat that ushered in military rule. He was able to publish Bebel Que a Cidade Comeu in 1968 but due to censorship, Zero, completed in 1969, was only first published in Europe in 1974 and censored from Brazil until the late 1970s. His experiences and knowledge were reflected in his novels, Nao verás país nenhum, Zero, and And Still Is The Earth. These novels also reflected the atmosphere of the time and according to Brandão responded to the conditions the dictatorship created. "[T]o make a literature that documents, that pictures, just like the camera filming the country in order to show it on the screen of the book; later this screen was obscured by censorship."