Memórias do Cárcere (1984)

In 1935, Getúlio Vargas’s government crushed the military uprising of the National Liberation Alliance, known as the Communist Uprising, and imposed measures suspending the guarantees of individual liberties for all Brazilians. Graciliano Ramos, a renowned writer and public education official in Alagoas who sympathized with communism and worked at the Government Palace, was eventually arrested in March 1936 without any formal charges being filed. After spending time in military barracks, public prisons where he witnessed the order to deport Olga Benário Prestes and Elisa, and a hospital where he was allowed visits from a lawyer and his wife, Heloísa, he was sent to the remote Penal Colony on Ilha Grande. There, despite being very ill from a poorly treated ulcer, he continued writing and managed to survive ten months of confinement under harsh conditions and enduring cruelty, with help from some staff members and the other prisoners in his section—thieves and political rebels who hoped to be portrayed in the writer’s books.