Between word and image: João Arthur Moroni debuts with a visual novel on memory, adoption and belonging

There is a silent dance between what was lived and what one tries to name. In O último romance na sua last dance, the visual artist and writer João Arthur Moroni turns that dance into a book: a hybrid body between text and painting, word and gesture, published by Editora Patuá.

The work is born as a wound that writes itself. No straight lines, no full stop. A fragmented, intimate novel that escapes conventional narrative to embrace the in-between, the interval where absence, love and the attempt at belonging live. Moroni, adopted as a newborn, does not look for easy answers: what emerges is a writing that at times prays, at times bleeds, at times dissolves into images and traces of a self-portrait under construction.

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“It is autobiographical without confessing”, says the author. “A delicate attempt at rebirth, narrating what was lived, felt, lost and what still pulses.”

Between the sacred and desire, between the passion that goes beyond love and the touch that becomes prayer, O último romance na sua last dance is an invitation for the reader to lose themselves and find themselves at once. Every page reveals a field of sensation, at times writing, at times painting, that puts the limits between body and language, between memory and invention, under tension.

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The intimate language, steeped in urgency and delicacy, reflects a young time still feeling for its origin. The book does not seek to say everything, but to let something reverberate: a memory that wants to stay alive, a name that wants to be spoken, a gesture that wants to be remembered.

Published by Editora Patuá, a reference in the publication of authorial and experimental work in Brazil, João Arthur Moroni's debut brings a new kind of novel to the stage: the one that dances with the gaps.

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Where to find it:

O Último romance na sua last dance is available on the Editora Patuá website, and soon at other points of sale specialising in contemporary Brazilian literature.

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