I was born in 1962 in Muriaé, a small city in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais, which is famous for its now-depleted gold mines, the sea it will never have, and for being the birthplace of some of the most famous Brazilian writers, including Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Guimarães Rosa. When I was a child I heard someone say that being born in Minas Gerais was like already being half-way on the path to becoming a writer. It was silly, but I believed it, and at the age of 13 I decided that I would earn a living as a writer.

   At 17 I moved to Rio de Janeiro to study journalism. Since then I have worked as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor or columnist in the majority of the main newspapers and printed media in the country. I was a sports writer, which brought me to Mexico to cover the World Cup in 1986, and for the last 20 years I have been involved in writing about culture. I have two blogs, one about literature: www.todoprosa.com.br, and another about the Portuguese language http://veja.abril.com.br/blog/sobre-palavras/, which can be found on the website of the largest weekly magazine in the country, Veja.

   I made my debut in literature in 2000 with a collection of stories, O homem que matou o escritor. Since then I have published more than seven books, including four novels and a volume of stories. My most recent novel, O drible, was launched in October of 2013. In April 2014 it was published in Spanish by Anagrama Publishers as El regate, in an excellent translation by the Mexican writer Juan Pablo Villalobos. It is a family drama that takes place against the backdrop of a half-century of history, both political and social, but mostly it is about Brazilian soccer in its golden years—far before this
7-1.

   O drible has also been translated into French and Danish, and earned me an invitation from Le Monde to collaborate as a writer of melodramatic novels in the land of Balzac. During the World Cup I published a novel in chapters (or submissions?) in a French newspaper titled Jules Rimet, meu amor, about the theft the world cup, which was won by the Brazilian team in 1970 (and that we naively thought would last forever). I am pleased to confirm that O drible is one of the signs, and not the only one, that although our soccer just experienced an unprecedented crisis, literature has finally begun to give this sport the role it deserves as one of the pillars of Brazilian culture.

   You can visit my personal website, which contains more information about my books at: www.srodrigues.com.br