Indigo Press secures Brum’s ‘new paradigm for life on earth’
The Indigo Press has scooped Eliane Brum’s Banzerio Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Centre of the World, translated by Diane Whitty.
Susie Nicklin, commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth English language rights from Katie Dublinski at Graywolf Press. It will be published in 9th March 2023.
In ‘lyrical, impassioned prose’ Brum writes about her move to the Altamira, a city along with the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest. The publisher wrote: ‘Weaving together the lived stories of the region and its history of violent corruption and destruction, Banzeiro Òkòtó is a call for radical change, for the creation of a new kind of human being capable of facing the potential extinction of our species. In it, Brum reveals the direct links between structural inequities rooted in gender, race, class, and even species, and the suffering that capitalism and climate breakdown wreak on those who are least responsible for them.’
Brum has been awarded over 40 prizes for her journalistic work and is also the author of The Collector of Leftover Souls (Graywolf Press) which was longlisted for the National Books Award for translated literature. She is also a columnist for El País and is the founder of Sumaúma: Journalism from the Centre of the World, a trilingual news platform based in Altamira.
‘Eliane Brum writes with passion and urgency about humanity’s need to prevent the massive carbon sink, the Amazon, becoming a carbon emitter,’ said Nicklin. ‘She envisages a new paradigm for life on earth, a new lexicon for describing ecosystems, and new psychological and societal structures. With the world still reeling from the murder of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira in June 2022, this book reaffirms the global importance of the Amazon. We are proud to add Eliane to our growing environmental list which includes books by Paul Behrens and Richard Seymour.’
Brum commented: ‘We are at war. This war against nature and the peoples who have never stopped being part of nature defines our present and future. Today’s children will only have a chance if we shift what we see as centre and periphery, two concepts that are currently misplaced. The Amazon and other natural life supports are the true centres of a planet in climate crisis. Repositioning our geopolitical centres also repositions our values. This movement is vital for us, the last generation that has the chance to prevent the world’s biggest tropical rainforest slipping beyond a point of no return.’
About Eliane Brum
Eliane Brum is an award-winning Brazilian journalist, writer,
and documentarist. Her work of nonfiction, The Collector of
Leftover Souls, was longlisted for the National Book
Award for translated literature.
She is a columnist for the international section of El País among other European and US newspapers and magazines. She is a founder of Sumaúma: Journalism from the Centre of the World, a trilingual news platform based in Altamira, in the Amazon rainforest, where she lives. Her work as a journalist has won more than 40 prizes.
