Writer Luís Filipe Sarmento was awarded the Clarice Lispector Literature Prize 2023 for his book Beat. The book was published in Portugal by The Poets and Dragons Society.

After the Ulysses Prize 2021 and the Cesar Vallejo International Prize 2022, “Beat” has once again been honored. This time, it was the Clarice Lispector Literature Prize, sponsored by ZL Books, from Rio de Janeiro, since 2016.

Luís Filipe Sarmento’s book was chosen from 60 competitors from the Portuguese-speaking world by a resident jury “made up of university professors and writers”.

The prize will be awarded on March 2, 2024, at the Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro during a gala dinner.

Luís Filipe Sarmento was born in Lisbon, studied Philosophy at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon, has 32 books, and has been translated into 16 languages and more than 20 countries.

Luis Filipe Sarmento is one of the most significant voices in contemporary literature in Portugal. Although he is already known in the United States, we need more of his books translated.
In an interview with Jornal de Notícias in January 2023, conducted by Sérgio Almeida, here is how he answered the following question: “The history of literature is full, as we well know, of splendid authors who were undoubtedly not estimable people. Do you easily separate these two aspects, or is it essential for you that writing also improves human qualities?

Artists were never estimable people in their time. There are brilliant paintings by people whose social behavior is less than praiseworthy in the eyes of Judeo-Christian culture and whose work is acquired by power. Just as there are brilliant writers whose works have contributed to improving human qualities, as you say, and who were not very recommendable individuals amid all kinds of hypocrisy that bourgeois societies can no longer hide. Nor does this type of society in which we live today allow its artists to be estimable people, not least because they are the easiest target for aggression and rape, and when they want to set an example of “a bad example,” they resort to the behavior of artists. It’s a fallacy. The work and the author cannot be dissociated, no matter how much it is handy for certain critics who create monsters in favor of the great mediocrity that inhabits the mainstream. The writer doesn’t have to be a moralist but an observer of the historical time he narrates and, if you look closely, what he is comes through in his work. Whether or not he contributes to improving human qualities, only time will tell. The writer is a destroyer of boundaries. In this respect, he creates a wave of unrest that bourgeois society wastes no time criticizing and combating, not least because it is its essence that is called into question.

Take a listen to a bit from the book Beat, read in Portuguese by the author.