Book, Artificial flowers[LS]

Writer Luiz Ruffato receives correspondence from a stranger at his home. It is a manuscript, a compilation of memories that Dório Finetto, a senior employee at the World Bank, wrote based on his many work trips. As a project consultant in the infrastructure area, Finetto traveled halfway around the world in a succession of symposiums, meetings and congresses. The engineer's mind, however, hides a shrewd and sensitive observer, one of those people capable of blending in naturally in a group of strangers. From Beirut to Havana, passing through Hamburg, East Timor, Buenos Aires and countless places around the world, Finetto collected great stories and small events. He was as capable of blending into local life as he was of knowing the exact time when it was wise to stay away and not get involved. For a few moments, it was part of these people's lives. In others, he was the involuntary protagonist of other people's drama. At times, he watched these realities almost as if from a periscope. It was based on these observations that Finetto composed his Viagens à terra alheia, the manuscript he sent to his fellow countryman Luiz Ruffato. And it is this book within the book that Ruffato will transform into the novel Flores Artificiales. Starting from a fictional skeleton, Ruffato - the author, and not the character of the book itself - will blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, without ever losing sight of the literary strength that is the great hallmark of his work.