The issue of mental health is extremely serious in Rio Grande do Sul. Historically, the state records high rates of depression and suicide, according to a bulletin from the state Department of Health published in 2023. This fact inspired Mariana Salomão Carrara to write The Loneliest Tree in the World that this week. won the 2025 São Paulo Literature Prize.
Winning the Best Novel of the Year category surprised the writer, who won the award for the second time.
“I confess that I was imagining that ‘wow, this time it won’t happen. I had just won,’ said Mariana, who also won the 2023 edition with the work “Were it not for the syllables of Saturday”.
In the now award-winning work, the writer shows a low-income family that works on tobacco plantations, which is one of the sectors that busiest the economy in the South. The characters go through difficulties, facing debts and poisoning due to the use of pesticides.
A huge tree, a pickup truck, a colonial mirror and a safety suit act as cameras in this family’s life. The objects provide an intimate, everyday view.
The writer explains that she chose to use these objects as the focus of the narrative to create uncertainty about what is being narrated and alienate the family from the context in which they are.
“I chose not to give this family a voice and awareness about what is happening. An idea that the objects gradually understand and the family doesn’t necessarily. It was also due to a literary need to create a story that no one is sure what they are doing”, said Mariana.
Creation process
The idea for the book came up in 2019, when Mariana Salomão read a report about suicide epidemics in Rio Grande Sul. The writer discovered that the epidemic was associated with tobacco pesticides, which cause serious depression.
Another factor is household debt, in which many enter into the “negative snowball effect”, that is, debts with compound interest, which can increase exponentially over time.
“This really caught my attention as a human being, but it immediately seemed like great literary material. I really wanted to dive into a craft, so it came in handy”, he explained.
However, the project was shelved during the covid-19 pandemic. For Mariana, continuing to write was challenging as she considered it “an exercise in imagination and escape from life itself”, something that for the writer was not possible to do during social distancing.
After finishing the novel Were it not for the syllables of Saturdayin 2022, the writer returned to the book project. The concept of work was beyond Mariana’s knowledge, who had always lived in large cities. The author said that, for the first time, she did a lot of research to write a book.
“It was a very big dive into a reality far from mine. My other books usually involve more intimate and sentimental research. This time, I had to research master’s degrees, read reports, interview people and even watch videos of teenagers that they themselves record and post on Tik Tok. It was a very broad research spanning several years”, pointed out Mariana.
São Paulo Literature Prize
The São Paulo Literature Prize is a project of the Secretary of Culture, Economy and Creative Industry, of the Government of the State of São Paulo. In addition to Mariana Salomão, writer Marcílio França Castro also had a victory, in the category of Best Debut Novel of the Year 2024, with the essay “O Último dos Copistas”.
The two will receive a prize of R$200,000 each and will receive an invitation to participate in the programming of the 40th Guadalajara International Book Fair, in Mexico, in 2026.
*Intern under the supervision of Odair Braz Junior
