Biografía:
Caxias, 1864 Henrique Maximiano Coelho Netto is a major poet, storyteller and playwright with a dazzling style full of vigor and expressive strength all over his language. He's considered one of Brazil's standard-bearing naturalists from the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. Since an early age, he took on the cultivation of literature and the arts. Shortly after that, he was already excelling in probably all the genres. As a poet, he dealt with a variety of topics that touched on Brazilian traditions, Eastern culture and the European artistic and intellectual legacy. He extolled urban and rural environments in the same breath. His great versatility allowed him to become a playwright of sorts, even though his best contributions to the Portuguese language were made in the field of fiction storytelling. Marked by naturalism and a rotund expressive strength, he wrote such works as "A capital federal", "Turbilhào", "Miragem" (1895) y "O rei negro" (1914). However, he got a real good name for himself in the wake of a controversy triggered by one of his short stories entitled "Magdala", published in the pages of El Peru Ilustrado, a cultural weekly edited by Peruvian writer Clorinda Matto de Turner. In the issue put out on August 23, 1890, the short story was immediately labeled as a sacrilege by Peru's most reactionary forces of traditional Catholicism. The effort was spearheaded by the Archbishop of Lima, the man who eventually banned Coehlo's story altogether from the printed press, and its reading was labeled as a deadly sin, as well as its spread and distribution. The repercussion of the short story reached out to all literary and cultural circles in all Hispanic America, and eventually boosted up Coehlo's popularity, even though his work didn't need such an adverse propaganda to prove it right. He was elected a member of the Brazilian Academy and was even knighted as the Prince of Brazil's Prose Writers. This major Brazilian author passed away in Rio de Janeiro in 1934. His memory remains very much alive in the new breeds of writers. That new generation and the Brazilian Academy have joined efforts to create the Coehlo Netto Awards, one of the most prestigious prizes in the South American nation.
