Carlos Heitor Cony

Carlos Heitor Cony (March 14, 1926 – January 5, 2018) was a Brazilian journalist and writer. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters (Portuguese: Academia Brasileira de Letras).

Cony viewed himself as center-leftist and faced persecution under the military government in the 1960s. Four of his works were adapted to movies. He was a columnist at the Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo.

Cony died in Rio de Janeiro on January 5, 2018, of multiple organ failure at the age of 91.

Biography

Son of the journalist Ernesto Cony Filho, considered "obscure," and Julieta Moraes Cony, Carlos Heitor Cony grew up in the Lins de Vasconcelos neighborhood, in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro. He was considered "mute" by his family until the age of four, when he spoke his first words reacting to a noise caused by a seaplane in Niterói. Due to this problem, which was only resolved when the writer was 15 years old through surgery, Cony was literate at home and studied at the Archdiocesan Seminary of São José in the Rio Comprido neighborhood until 1945, abandoning it before ordination as a priest. The following year, he began studying at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Brazil, but interrupted the course in 1947, and had his first experience as a journalist at the Jornal do Brasil covering his father's vacation.