"No longer will the choirs of the voices of the singers of Guayrá be heard. No longer will they appreciate the art carved in the saints and the weapons forged in Guayrá. Nothing will be found in you, Rome. Nothing will be found in you, Portugal. No nothing else will be found in you, Spain. Nothing else will be found in you, oh juruá!"
This brief description has one addressee: you, the reader. And the destination? Guayrá. This is the name of the new 320-page novel launched by writer and professor at the Faculty of Chemical Engineering (FEQ) at Unicamp Marco Aurélio Cremasco. In the work, he alludes to the region of Paraná that was known as Guayrá in the 17th century.
The Guayrá region is embedded in the geography of Paraná, delimited by its large Paranapanema rivers to the north; Paraná in the west; Tibagi to the east; a piece of Iguaçu in the south; Ivaí and Piquiri to the southeast and southwest. Along the banks of these rivers, or in their vicinity, Jesuit reductions and Spanish villages were installed, later destroyed by residents of the Captaincy of São Vicente.
The book poetically presents a time-space of conflicts and disputes involving culture, economy, mythology, religion and politics that took place in a wild place where Spanish colonizers, Portuguese priests and indigenous peoples lived together. The author used historical elements and incorporated the mythical and linguistic universe of indigenous peoples and the biblical world into the narrative.
According to the author, the book can be understood as "a historical fiction, since canonical History, even though it serves as a basis for the plot, is questioned to allow distinct and conflicting views, including through the amalgamation between fiction and mythology, in a way to make History a character of its own".
The novel, published by Editora Confraria do Vento, seeks, through language, to reconstitute the environment in which different cultures established contact and conflict. He addresses the historical richness that still remains obscure in the memory of Paraná and highlights that Guayrá it can also mean "that time endures", even after 400 years.
Born in Guaraci, Paraná, Marco Aurélio Cremasco is one of the founders of the literature magazine Babel. He is the author of five books of poetry, in addition to the novel Holy Kings of Divine Light (Editora Record, 2004), winner of the 2005st Sesc Literature Prize and finalist for the Jabuti Prize in XNUMX; The Things of João Flores (Editora Patuá); and stories Likely Stories (Editora Record, 2007).
He also authored books of a more technical nature, such as Mass Transfer Fundamentals, Is it worth studying Chemical Engineering, Unit Operations in Particulate and Fluid Mechanical Systemss (Editora Blucher) and Likely Stories (Editora Record).
