Eliane Brum | Granta

Eliane Brum

Eliane Brum (born 1966) is a Brazilian journalist, writer and documentary film-maker. She writes regularly for El País and the Guardian and has won more than forty international awards for reporting, among them the Premio Rey de España and the Inter American Associated Press Award. She is the author of eight non-fiction books, including The Collector of Leftover Souls, as well as the novel One Two. She is also the director/co-director of three documentaries: Severina’s Story, Gretchen Filme Estrada and Laerte-Se. She lives in Brazil.

Publications

The Collector of Leftover Souls

Eliane Brum

Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty

Welcome to the favela, welcome to the rainforest, welcome to the real Brazil.

This is the Brazil where a factory worker is loyal to his company for decades, only to find out that they knew the product he was making would eventually poison him. This is the Brazil where the mothers of the favela expect their sons to die as victims of the drug trade while still in their teens. This is the Brazil where the women initiated into the old Amazonian tradition of ‘baby-pulling’ deliver babies in their own time, far away from the drugs and scalpels of the modern hospital. In the company of award-winning journalist Eliane Brum, we meet the individuals struggling to stay afloat in a society riven by inequality and violence, and witness the resilience of spirit and commitment to life that makes Brazil one of the most complicated, most exhilarating places on earth.