We should read - and listen to - Raduan Nassar

Last year, brazilian writer Raduan Nassar was honored with Camões Prize, the biggest premium to authors from Portuguese speaking countries community. Many people consider him the most important brazilian novelist alive. But all these credentials haven't prevented current brazilian federal government to disrespect him.

The prize was received by Nassar last Friday (2. 17. 2017), during a ceremony at Lasar Segall Museum, in São Paulo. In his speech, the writer spoke out on Brazil's present situation ("We've lived in dark times".), as well as denounced the wrongdoings of Michel Temer's administration ("The mentioned facts configure, by extension, a repressive government as a whole: against workers, against judicious retirements, against federal universities of gratuitous education [..]. Government linked, by the way, to neoliberalism, with its scandalous concentration of wealth, which has been worsening the poor people's life of the whole world"). The full speech can be found here (in Portuguese)

Shortly after, the government official, Culture Minister Roberto Freire, discourteous, rather than just pretending that he had nothing to do with those issues, talked shit, having a row with the ceremony guests.

Why are politicians so arrogant, generally so full of their own "importance"?

Raduan Nassar, 81 years-old, is a recluse man who retired from literary life in 1984 and nobody knows why. Since then, he's become a full-time farmer whose public appearances are quite rare. So, when this man is receiving a remarkable literary distinction I think he's entitled to say whatever he wants to! His work is much more important to my country than the current government, which has arisen from a stealthy coup d'etat, backed by media companies and some members of the judiciary.