Isabela Gaby, the famous writer who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021 was born in Spain, the same country where her great-grandparents came from, as was her great-uncle. When her parents ended up together inuffs after her marriage to a Portuguese consul, Gaby was taken away from her native land. She managed to get herself and her lover back to Brazil, though, eventually settling in Paris. She met and married Mario Negrin, the Brazilian writer, in 1931, and went on to have six children with him before divorcing him in the next decade.
She had always said that the most important quality of her books was her natural sense of nationality – that’s how she could so easily identify with the people of Brazil. As she grew older and published more novels about subjects from Portugal and Brazil (which is actually where her real nationality begins), she began to attract the attention of various British national libraries, publishing a series of books called The Jewels of Portugal. This time, however, she didn’t really want to identify as a Portugal or a Brazilian. Instead, she wrote under the guise of a character named Helen Mirreno and delved into the lives of ordinary Portuguese people, their relationships with Portugal, and their views on nationality. The result was an incredibly successful career that would help make Mirreno one of the most beloved writers in the world.
Gaby’s greatest claim to fame (so far) was her short story collection, Descent Into the Valley of the Princes (1940). It was nominated for an Academy Award and became something of a modern classic, since it was the first novel to look at the relationship between a Brazilian and a Portuguese princess. Gaby also produced a series of novelette and short stories, which won her several awards, including the Venice Festival Prize and the Prix Goncourt. It is clear that Gaby is a hugely imaginative and sympathetic writer, whose work is full of colour and life.