Biography
Elvira Vigna was a journalist and author who wrote several dozen books and worked for the Brazilian dailies O Globo and Folha de São Paulo. She won a Brazilian Academy of Letters prize for her novel Nothing to Say (2010). Her last novel, which we will be discussing, is Como se estivéssemos em palimpsesto de putas, about which a reviewer wrote ‘the impression one gets from Vigna is that she is finally baring her teeth, in an act that is at once an aggressive sneer and a guffaw.’ After being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, she still published seven books and translated four more. At the time of her death in 2016, Elvira was working on an experiment of intersemiotics, Kafkianas with images and texts for children based on Kafka’s stories.