(Rio de Janeiro) The Brazilian writer Nelida Piñón, translated in more than 30 countries, first woman president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) and winner of numerous prizes, died on Saturday at the age of 85, announced her house of ‘editing.
“Nelida Piñón died today in a hospital in Lisbon. The cause of death has not yet been confirmed,” the publishing house Record said in a statement.
Her body will be repatriated to Brazil and she will be buried in the mausoleum of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, in a cemetery in Rio de Janeiro.
“It is a great loss for Brazilian literature. She was probably the greatest living Brazilian writer,” ABL president Merval Pereira told Globonews, where he is a columnist.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1937, in 2005 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, considered the Spanish Nobel, for all of her work.
Nelida Piñon, whose first name is the anagram of that of her grandfather, Daniel, has published around twenty books, including novels The house of passion (1972) and the republic of dreams (1984), based on the story of his family who emigrated to Brazil from Galicia, Spain.
She has also written collections of stories, such as fruit time (1966).
A pioneer in several respects, the Brazilian writer became in 1998 the first woman doctor honoris causa of the University of Santiago de Compostela.
Nelida Piñon entered the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the Brazilian equivalent of the French Academy, in 1989, and seven years later became the first woman to chair it since its founding a century earlier.