Rui Zink |
Rui Zink (b. 1961) is a Portuguese writer and playwright who has written novels, short stories, essays and plays, some twenty works in all. He belongs to the new generation of Portuguese writers influenced by comics and fantasy literature. This is evident in particular in Zink's cult novel Apocalipse Nau (1996, "Apokalypse Nau") whose first-person narrator is a devil. Satan's envoy has been commissioned to implement the end of the world at the turn of the millennium. However, as the novel progresses, he turns into more of a guardian devil in particular for Jorge, a mediocre architect living in the midst of a banal family hell. Jorge and Helena insult each other incessantly out of sheer boredom. Helena's lover visits her every day, whilst Jorge is besotted with his own son's girlfriend. The narrator devil tries to stop Jorge committing suicide just before the start of the end of the world on 1st January 2000. The devil has had no opportunity for wrongdoing for ages since people have turned their lives into a hell on earth themselves. Apocalipse Nau has been translated into German, along with Zink's first novel Hotel Lusitano (1987). In his latest novel O Suplente (2000, "The Surrogate”) Zink seeks to shake off his reputation as a cult writer. The book is about the death of a child, which leads on to a series of personal disasters for all concerned. The novel has been extolled not only for its psychological perspicacity but also for the fact that it maintains a breathtaking equilibrium between the serious theme and the irony so typical of Zink. Zink's ten plays include SubVersões ("SubVersions/Verses") and A Realidade a Cores ("Reality in colours"), completed in 2000. Zink has taught at the University of Michigan in the USA and translated Saul Bellow's works into Portuguese. Nowadays, he lectures on Portuguese literature at the Nova University in Lisbon. He runs his own talk-show on Portuguese television and contributes regularly to a major Lisbon weekly. Zink has also been involved in street theatre and happenings, and holds a second-grade black belt in karate.
|
|
Writer gallery |