A Life of Reading
Gabriela de Mendonça Gomes
Long-form literary criticism on literature, philosophy, and culture.
Featured Video Essays
The Forgotten Art of Desiring
Why You've Never Heard of Brazil's Greatest Writers
The Art of close reading
Essays & Reading Lists
Jorge Amado & The Myth of the Brazilian Soul
“Jorge Amado didn't write books, he wrote a country” – Mozambican author Mia Couto.
How can someone write a country?
Georg Büchner’s Lenz: Of Madness, Solitude, and the Paradox of Consciousness
“He felt no fatigue except sometimes it annoyed him that he could not walk on his head.”
The Art of Reading Closely
You may never read a book, a poem, or an essay the same way again.
Philosophy is Dead, and we’ve killed it
The Ancients had it right.
About Gabriela
I’m Gabriela de Mendonça Gomes, a Brazilian-born reader, writer, and the creator of A Life of Reading––a channel and publication devoted to literature, philosophy, translation, culture, and the literary life.