How I Wrote The Riddle of Qaf

Alberto Mussa (Brazil, 1961) is an acclaimed novelist, translator, and historian of samba, whose work has won many prizes and been translated into fifteen languages. His novel O enigma de Qaf (2004; The Riddle of Qaf, 2008) focuses on the culture of pre-Islamic Arabia, whose celebrated poems, Al-Muallaqat, he translated into Portuguese as Os poemas suspensos (2006; The Hanging Poems). With A biblioteca elementar (2018; The Elementary Library), he completed a quintet of detective novels, each set in a different century in Rio de Janeiro.