As soon as he launched the first part of the Biography of by Companhia das Letras, in October 2021, the journalist and writer, 79, announced that the second and last part would come out in June 2023. The release, however, was postponed times.
The author stated that he was waiting, from the US government, access to the records that confirmed to have about Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the United States security agencies, such as the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. There were 916 records that quoted Lula, he said.
Given the recurring delays, Morais was forced to trigger a British law firm to streamline the receipt of the documentation.
“As I am from Mariana, where the Pogust Goodhead office happened, who gained the cause of the population against the company in the London courts, took my cause without any charge. They are representing me in the United States for me to gain access to these records,” Morais says in an interview of about three hours to Sheet.
But the reason for the delay, as he clarifies in his apartment in the neighborhood of Higienópolis, in São Paulo, was not only due to the lack of access to the documents. “I am quick to find out, but slow to write,” he says, jokingly getting annoyed by the speed of fellow biographers such as “spoiling the market”.
“In addition to this usual slowness, I did new investigations, research and interviews,” says the author. He decided with his editor, which will be three volumes to close Lula’s political trajectory. If the documents arrive, they can enter the last volume or become yet another book.
The second book of the now trilogy should come out in March, after the first sells more than 100,000 copies in four reprints, according to the author – the publisher does not disclose numbers.
Taking advantage of the mention of Lira Neto, the reporter asks if he would have influenced her in the increase in Lula project to three books. “Certainly inspired me. Besides, I’m a getterist,” he says, laughing.
The second volume begins where the first ends, when Lula, after being defeated in the elections for governor of the state of São Paulo in 1982, travels to Cuba to cure depression because he was fourth in fourth place, in an election won by Franco Montoro.
“Lula has always had difficulty with the defeats,” says the biographer. “All defeats depress him and somehow induce him at the height of giving up the next one.”
Advised by, who draws his attention to the fact that he, a worker, received more than one million votes, Lula decides to embrace this political heritage and move on. Before becoming a constituent deputy, the petista acted in the rallies of the Directs already, in 1984, which made him better known throughout Brazil.
Morais tells of one of the chapters of the second book that, during the elections of the Electoral College, won indirectly by Tancredo Neves in 1985, Lula called Jose Dirceu and asked him to expel the three federal deputies from what at the time voted in Tancredo :, Airton Soares and José Eudes. “Lula sends Jose Dirceu for the three. Dirceu was his armed hand inside the party.”
For the book, Morais interviewed Mendes and Soares, who today no longer keep hurt. He also talked to the presidents of the PSTU (Socialist Party of Unified Workers), Zé Maria, and PCO (Party of the Workers’ Cause), Rui Costa. “It is evident that the PT made a mistake in the expulsions, in radicality, the three were good politicians, with recognition both inside and outside the party,” says Morais.
Even with a prominent performance as a constituent deputy, “Lula discovers that being a deputy was not his beach, Parliament did not match him,” according to the biographer.
One of the interviews that Morais did for the second volume was with former Senator Tasso Jereissati, once one of the big names in the PSDB, to rescue the story of his “dating” with Lula before the success of.
“A Lula Plate was going out in the head and the vice-vice. Brazil would certainly have another face. But the story wanted the real plan to be a success and FHC won the elections. However, I wonder that the country would be born of the union, at that time, between the PT, a left-wing party with Marxist currents, with toucan social democracy.”
Thinking about the Lula-Tasso plate, Lula had decided that the PT would support Mario Covas to the São Paulo State Government and would stiff José Dirceu, candidate for the party in those 1994 elections-after convas.
The second volume ends when Lula wins the elections for President of the Republic for the first time, 23 years ago, and goes to Avenida Paulista to make the victory speech.
“Lula learns of victory in a hotel on Berrini Avenue and moves to the speech at Paulista, on his 57th birthday, on October 27, 2002.”
The third volume will contemplate Lula’s passages in the presidency, the two governments of, their impeachment and the governments of Temer and Bolsonaro. Ends with William Bonner announcing on television the petista’s victory for his third term.
Asked when the final part of the trilogy reaches bookstores, Morais replies: “Perhaps in a year and a half, two years at most. It’s enough time. My fieldwork is already advanced. I will still have to do interviews, but I already have a rich database in the micro memory.”
Ending his saga with Lula, Morais will be led in the stories of Partitude, the Brazilian Communist Party, which was born in 1922 and, according to him, closes a great cycle of his interest in themes and characters that made the history of Brazil in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Prolific, the author states that he has already sold the rights of his books on Paulo Coelho, “The Magician”, and the Marshal Casimiro Montenegro Filho, “Montenegro”, for audiovisual. He is also making the script of a documentary about José Dirceu, and as soon as Lula’s biography is over, he intends to transform the stories he researched about Antonio Carlos Magalhães (ACM) into a miniseries.
And his own stories will be part of “The Black Box of Fernando Morais”, a series in four chapters directed by Paulo Cesar Toledo who is expected to enter HBO Max in the first quarter of 2026.
