Gonçalo M. Tavares, writer: ‘If a country like the U.S. has 40 million poor people, that country isn’t rich’

There are writers… and then, there’s Gonçalo M. Tavares. His strange, surgical and violent literature springs up from who knows where. Then, unflinchingly, he lets it rest. When he returns to long-forgotten drafts, he’s capable of hacking at them with the same machete blows he would use on a tangled jungle. If something can be said in three words, Tavares will never use six. With this method, the 56-year-old — who was born in Luanda, Angola — has published 50 works of literature (almost one for each year he’s been alive), known collectively as The Notebooks of Gonçalo M. Tavares. This conceptual tree branches out into epics, novels, mythologies, haikus, artworks, plays and poems. Genres matter to him as little as tidying up his kitchen, which is exactly where EL PAÍS spoke with him one afternoon this past May, amidst piles of dirty dishes and kitschy figurines that he buys on his travels around the world.

He’s a 21st-century Renaissance man, with boundless curiosity and Prussian discipline acquired during his days as a soccer player. He can’t stop writing, but he doesn’t consider books to be the center of the universe: he enjoys his academic research at the University of Lisbon just as much as his forays into peripheral social projects. A play based on one of his novels, A Girl Is Lost in Her Century, Looking for Her Father (2014), which features a character with Down syndrome, was performed by actors with disabilities on Portugal’s most important stage, the Queen Maria II National Theater.

The apartment where he writes, located not far from the house where José Saramago lived, reveals that he’s an obsessive reader. Books occupy almost every room, creating an equal mix of light and anarchy. While he always remembers writing, he wasn’t published until he turned 30. That was when he began editing all the drafts he had accumulated, and the books that were ultimately published got attention everywhere.

The latest folks to be captivated by his talent were the judges of the Formentor Prize for Literature, organized by the Spanish foundation that brought EL PAÍS to Lisbon to interview the author. The prize will be awarded to him on November 1.

He has dedicated several dark novels to the subject of fascism — part of his Kingdom series — and several novellas to thinkers he admires (part of a 2012 collection released in English as The Neighborhood).

Mateo Lost His Job (2010), a collection of stories not translated to English, but widely read in Spain, revolves around oddball characters, such as a blind millionaire who asks a male prostitute to tattoo the periodic table (in braille) on his body. And The End of the United States of America (2025), his epic about a pandemic that preys on the poor and leads to a civil war, was released in Portugal in November 2025.

Seated by a large window overlooking a garden, he speaks emphatically, but in a soft voice. As he talks, he scribbles on blank sheets of paper. They’ll eventually be filled after a two-hour-long conversation with EL PAÍS.

Question. You were born in Angola in 1970. At the time, the country was a Portuguese colony. Do you remember anything from that period?

Answer. I returned to Portugal when I was five, in 1975. My father was a military engineer and went [to Angola] to build a bridge; fortunately, it wasn’t during the civil war (1975-2002). I have some memories of the music and the Bay of Luanda… and perhaps other memories influenced by photographs.

Q. Is there anything in your identity as a writer that’s related to the family you were born into?

A. Maybe. For years, I was asked the recurring question of why I was a writer… my answer was, because I started reading and writing! I recently realized that I’m a writer because of something that happened in 1952, long before I was born. My mother was a mathematics teacher and belonged to a middle-class family in [the Portuguese city of] Aveiro. My father came from a fairly poor family; my grandfather was a widowed policeman with three children. At the age of 15, my father was chosen as the top student in Portugal and he represented the country at the United Nations, in New York City.

When he finished the fourth grade, at age 10, my grandfather wanted him to work in the fields. But [my father’s] teachers went to convince him that he had to study. I’m eternally grateful to those persistent teachers who stood up to a very stubborn grandfather, who was also a policeman… and armed. The teachers were brave.

Q. Very brave.

A. They convinced him. And afterward, my father had a brilliant career. It’s clear that I’m a writer because, back in 1952, some teachers did that. Otherwise, my father would have had a different life… I don’t know if it would have been better or worse. [Even] if we don’t believe in mystical things, we have to accept that essential parts of our lives don’t depend on us.

Q. What did you like about playing soccer?

A. First and foremost, the physical endurance. And the discipline, something I later brought to literature. In soccer, you don’t skip training because of bad weather. I also liked the camaraderie, the atmosphere in the locker room.

Q. What does the university give you that literature doesn’t?

A. I always considered it essential to not depend on literature. I write out of necessity… and I never think about whether I’ll have readers or not. That’s sacred to me. I started teaching when I was 20; it gave me the financial security to write freely.

The university has many qualities — the idea of stimulating people’s curiosity fascinates me. I like being in other worlds that don’t necessarily value literature. It’s ridiculous to think that a book is the center of the universe. In some countries, if I give someone a book, they’ll think about how to turn it into food.

Q. Why did you quit soccer?

A. At a certain point, I realized the absurdity of voluntarily entering a space that has both pleasure and pain. First, I experienced pain in my metatarsals and then, in my metaphysics. But I don’t place them on the same level. The metatarsal pain is stronger.

Q. What’s your relationship with pain?

A. I try to avoid it! Physical pain is a kind of brain freeze. If we have it, our brain races around, trying to find ways to alleviate it. On crazy days, when I write for hours — when I wake up from writing — my hands tremble with hunger. It’s a kind of hallucinatory state.

Q. You go into a trance.

A. I wrote The End of the United States of America (2025) in a real trance. Without wanting to romanticize it, writing is one of the things that makes me forget my body. And I’m a very physical person. If I’m hungry or want coffee, my whole mind focuses on that. Only the act of writing allows me to forget my body, which is always demanding things. My writing is also primal; it’s not on the level of food, but I’d put it on the level of coffee. I need it, otherwise I get irritated.

Q. If you don’t write, do you also get irritated?

A. Absolutely. I need to be alone for three or four hours a day. Writing is perhaps a consequence of my need for solitude. I reserve mornings for reading and writing; I can only socialize after that. If I don’t [get my writing done] in the morning, I’m not able to write in the afternoon and I won’t be good company. I feel a kind of instinctive guilt.

Q. I hope you wrote something today!

A. [Laughs]. Yes. I read and I wrote. I read essays when I wake up; poetry and fiction in the afternoon. I write like an animal; I’m not at all rational, despite what my [published works] may suggest. This kind of writing, being instinctive, is very fast. I can write 15 or 20 pages in a morning. When I write slowly, it’s because I haven’t really gotten started yet.

Q. One of the things that distinguishes you is how you let your works stew: many years pass between writing and publishing. What do you seek with this pause?

A. I had the idea of publishing only after the age of 30, in order to reach [a certain level of] maturity. But before being published, I wrote dozens of books. I read and wrote like a madman. Jerusalem, for example, came out in 2005, but it was written in 1999. I trust my judgment as a reader and I want to apply it to my books. And the only way to do that is to let time pass. After writing [the manuscripts], I forget about them for a while. Discarding hundreds of pages is only possible after that time. I have very rigorous critical judgment.

Q. How many manuscripts do you have sitting in a drawer?

A. Many. Maybe dozens.

Q. In five years, will we be able to read what you’re writing now?

A. Yes. But that’s something that could be problematic. When I die — which could happen tomorrow, or in a week — there will be a gigantic number of books.

Q. Do you think about death?

A. A lot. One of the essential books I read in my twenties was Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic. He writes that a philosopher isn’t someone who knows about theory; rather, they’re someone who lives life while knowing full well that they will eventually die.

Europeans have transformed death into a kind of malevolent ghost. [However], I believe it can be a benevolent ghost, in the sense of relativizing the good and bad things. If you break your leg, it seems like a misfortune… but if you know that you’re going to die one day, it doesn’t matter. Death is a reference point for life; it gives things their proper weight.

Q. When you measure something against death, hardly anything compares.

A. Yes, hardly anything. We Westerners place great importance on the length of life, but little on the moment of death. In [Portuguese-speaking] Africa, there’s a surname: Boa Morte (“Good Death”). In some cultures, they feel that a bad death is when you’re not surrounded by the people you love. In the West, people sometimes have a terrible death in a hospital, alone and surrounded by machines.

Q. Would you prefer to die at home?

A. Yes. We should choose the music and objects we want to have at that moment. And the people we want to surround ourselves with.

Q. What music would you put on?

A. I haven’t thought about it yet, but I should. I haven’t had the courage to ask my parents that yet… but I must, because it’s an important question.

Q. Your latest book deals with a civil war in the U.S., following a pandemic. You wrote it in 2019, as a dystopia. Perhaps it seems less far-fetched today…

A. Nowadays, it feels like a description! [In the book, there’s] a virus that respects borders and only affects the United States. It’s discovered that the poor transmit it. And so, they end up in ghettos. Over time, the isolation creates a genetic incompatibility between the poor and the rich when it comes to procreation. Then, a civil war breaks out. It’s a struggle between the rich people who don’t defend the poor and the rich people who do.

All revolutions are made by the rich — they have spare time. Poverty puts people outside the public sphere. A democracy with poverty isn’t a democracy. It’s only a democracy when everyone has a basic standard of living. I don’t understand how a country’s wealth is classified by GDP. If there are 40 million poor people in a country, like in the U.S., then that country isn’t rich, I’m sorry to say.

Economic indicators are obscene in terms of social conscience. When you talk about trying to redistribute wealth, [the idea] is quickly labeled as “far-left.” If someone [has a] brilliant [idea], they should get credit… but there has to be a balance. A tax on the super-rich is essential.

Q. You’ve said that this generation of billionaires lacks empathy. And that this is something new.

A. Traditionally, the wealthy had charitable projects and supported the arts, like the Medici in Florence. We can criticize this philanthropy by saying that it wasn’t sincere, but they still did it. I don’t think Elon Musk has a single charitable project; I don’t recall him ever talking about poverty.

One of the things that shocked me about Trump happened during a campaign rally, when he ridiculed a person with a disability. When I saw that, I thought it was the end of the world. Historically, [this attitude] hasn’t been seen even in the most bloodthirsty individuals. There used to be a formal decorum, which the U.S. administration and Elon Musk are suddenly destroying. For Elon Musk, the poor don’t exist; they’re invisible. And this [attitude] is brutal and unprecedented. There’s never been such a concentration of wealth in history. There’s such massive inequality that I think it will explode, because it’s unsustainable.

What I find dangerous is that these people have so much money that they can interfere in wars. We’re seeing Elon Musk interfering in the war in Ukraine through his satellites. Individually, he’s already a state and a very powerful one, at that. He can transform his wealth into an army. Potentially, Elon Musk could invade Portugal.

Q. European countries are militarizing again. Are we heading toward a major war?

A. The 21st century is beginning to resemble the 20th century like a bad photocopy. That old pandemic known as the Spanish flu took place in 1919, and the coronavirus was in 2020. In 1929, the stock market crashed and the U.S. stopped supporting Germany financially, [ending the reconstruction loans and aid that the Germans had been receiving after they] were defeated in World War I. Inflation and unemployment began to rise sharply. Hitler — who won the elections democratically — drastically reduced inflation and unemployment. It’s good to remember this, because sometimes, the devil can solve problems. If a crash occurs in 2029 with a massive economic crisis and rising unemployment, the conditions would be ripe for a savior to appear and promise to fix it.

It feels as if we’re making an evil soup, adding ingredients one by one. The horror unfolding in Palestine, these wars that keep popping up… these are all ingredients that are very similar to the ones at the beginning of the 20th century. Nationalism is being revived, especially by the far right; the aim is to create the conditions so that young people who don’t know a thing and couldn’t care less about World War II will happily sing on their way to defend their country, even if it means invading another one.

Q. You’re the most translated Portuguese author. And this is despite the fact that your books aren’t easy reads.

A. All my books have been translated. It’s surprising. And I’m very happy about it, because I’m not your typical novelist. There’s a logic to literature as a business that’s wretched: I respect a salesperson who wants to sell vacuum cleaners or books, but a creator is different — they’re someone who does what they feel compelled to do.

I have nothing against books that sell a lot, as long as they’re like Don Quixote (1605-1615) or Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World (2022). What does irritate me is when literature just becomes a distraction. A good book doesn’t allow the reader to be in a passive state like a viewer watching a Netflix series.

A large part of the population has already accepted that art is for entertainment. Sometimes, the fault doesn’t lie with the people themselves, who are in a system that forces them to work 10 or 12 hours a day. A particular body of literature that’s designed for the weary is beginning to emerge, which is the height of [what Guy Debord described as] “the society of spectacle.” People work so many hours that, in their leisure time, they hardly have any energy left. And so, they look for a film or a book that’s as basic as it gets.

Q. And this kind of literature demands that authors participate in the spectacle. You, however, don’t have social media.

A. I don’t; I’m a caveman. I know I lose many readers because of that, but I just accept it. Creation is an act of concentration; social media distracts people.

Q. José Saramago predicted that, one day, you would receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. What’s the point of a Nobel Prize?

A. I don’t write to publish; I write because, if I don’t, I get irritated. The interesting thing is whether an author has [cultural] influence and stands out. Books that look alike [will eventually] disappear.

Seneca once wrote: “Rise above the pleasure that comes from the applause of the majority.” The Nobel Prize in Literature has [been awarded to] incredible writers and that’s what gives it value. If I were to be given the prize, the next day, I would still read and write. The ancient Greeks believed that there are two categories of things in the world: the things that depend on us and the things that don’t. If there are people who think I deserve the Nobel Prize, that’s not up to me. I did what I had to do: create the work. If I channel any energy toward what doesn’t depend on me, I drain energy away from what does. My writing is what I have control over.

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