The Brazilian writer and translator of German descent Lya Luft is dead. She died on Friday in the city of Porto Alegre at the age of 83 of skin cancer, as her publisher Record announced.
After seven months of fighting the disease, Luft returned home from the hospital for the Christmas season and died there in her sleep, her daughter Suzana Luft told Brazilian media.
Luft was born in 1938 in the southern Brazilian city of Santa Cruz do Sul, which was dominated by German immigrants. She has published numerous novels and other volumes, starting with a collection of poems in 1964. Some of her books have been translated into German and other languages - for example "Die Frau auf der Klippe" (1994). She also translated from German and English into Portuguese herself - works by Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf, among others.
According to the Record publishing house, Luft was one of the most popular writers in the South American country this century.
"Brazil is losing one of its greatest thinkers," said the president of the publishing group, Sonia Machado Jardim, according to the announcement.
The governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, wrote on Twitter that Luft left "a gap that is difficult to close."
col / dpa
