Finalists for Brazil’s Premio Oceanos 2022 announced.

The ten finalists for Brazil’s Premio Oceanos 2022 were announced on Tuesday, November 8, 2022.

Oceanos-Prêmio de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa is a Brazilian literary award handed out annually since it was established in 2003. In the first years, only works by Brazilian writers were eligible for the Portugal Telecom-sponsored award until 2007 when Portuguese-language works from other countries were considered. Some of the previous winners of the award have been Luís Cardoso, Itamar Vieira Junior, Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, and Marília Garcia.

The 2022 edition had an initial jury made up of 122 poets, professors and literary critics – elected, through a digital platform that received submitted books and went through two subsequent juries. The intermediate jury, which selected the ten finalist works among the 65 semifinalists, included Jeferson Tenório, Nina Rizzi, Paulo Scott, and Prisca Agustoni, from Brazil; João Luís Barreto Guimarães and José Riço Direitinho, from Portugal; and Teresa Manjate, from Mozambique.

The finalists for the award this year are;

• Líbano, labirinto, Alexandra Lucas Coelho (Portugal), Editorial Caminho
• Maremoto, de Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (Portugal), Relógio D’Água
• Museu da Revolução, João Paulo Borges Coelho (Mozambique), Editorial Caminho e Kapulana,
• O livro do homem líquido, Pedro Pereira Lopes (Mozambique), Gala-Gala Edições,  
• O som do rugido da onça, Micheliny Verunschk (Brazil), Companhia das Letras.
• Quarentena – Uma história de amor, José Gardeazabal (Portugal), Companhia das Letras Portugal.
• Quem tá vivo levanta a mão, Maria Fernanda Elias Maglio (Brazil), Patuá.
• Risque esta palavra, Ana Martins Marques (Brazil), Companhia das Letras
• Tornado, Teresa Noronha (Mozambique), Exclamação.
• Vista Chinesa, Tatiana Salem Levy (Brazil), Todavia e Elsinore.

The final jury, which reads and evaluates the finalist books to choose the three winners, includes Cristhiano Aguiar, Guilherme Gontijo Flores, Joselia Aguiar and Júlia de Carvalho Hansen, from Brazil; Artur Bernardo Minzo, from Mozambique; and Ana Cristina Leonardo and Helena Vasconcelos, from Portugal.

The announcement of the winners of Oceanos takes place for the first time in a Portuguese-speaking country on the African continent. On December 8 and 9, Oceanos will hold a literary program in Maputo, Angola with writers from Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal. On the 9th, at 1 pm in Brazil, 5 pm in Portugal and 6 pm in Mozambique, the winners of Oceanos 2022 will be announced in a ceremony broadcast on YouTube.

The total value of the prize is 250,000 reais – 120,000 for the first place, 80,000 for the second and 50,000 for the third.