• Home
  • About
    • Bio
    • Press packet
  • Contact
  • Books
    • The Toss of a Lemon
    • The Ever After of Ashwin Rao
    • São Bernardo
  • News and Thoughts
  • Short Pieces
  • Book clubs
  • Events
Padma Viswanathan

Online Publications

How to Break in to Publishing If You’re a Smalltown Brazilian Mayor in the 1930s

Graciliano Ramos famously came to national attention in Brazil when the annual reports he submitted to the state government, in his capacity as mayor of his hometown, mysteriously made their way into the press. Here’s the first, in my translation.

Why Didn’t “Brazil’s William Faulkner” Achieve the Same International Fame?

In which I ask a few questions about comparing authors and cultural dominance.

Graciliano Ramos and The Plague

About a viral narrative lurking within a story I thought I knew.

On Translating São Bernardo

A piece for World Literature Today on the pleasures and difficulties of rendering this novel into English.

Recent News

  • The translator, translated
  • Sheltering in the Prose of a Master
  • Why is Graciliano Ramos barely read outside of Brazil?
  • Why Maggie Nelson Is Always My Favorite
  • The Plague Boom
  • Prelude to the Plague
  • Ashwin Rao one of “11 Literary Novels That Confront Contemporary Issues”
  • Found: Gun, damp
  • Gaveaway again!
  • Enter to win Audible.com copy of The Toss of a Lemon

© 2023 Padma Viswanathan