Books: Starting from his grandfather’s stories, Sandro William Junqueira writes truths until they become beautiful fiction

HThese are real people who have more adventurous lives and a more literary profile than many fictional characters. EmÃdio Gomes da Silva, the maternal grandfather of writer Sandro William Junqueira, was one of these people. Born into a very poor family, from a village near Aljubarrota, he soon asserted his difference in relation to his brothers, his father (a “kind, always smoking temporary†cooper), his neighbors and to all the men in the neighborhood. He was a very handsome young man — gray eyes, a mustache like Errol Flynn always making girls crazy –, very smart, with a knack for business and “trickery†for his own benefit. The archetype of the lifebreaker who only follows one commandment: “run over life before it runs over you†.