Paula Abramo's Fiat Lux evokes the poet's ancestors who were political refugees from Italy and Eastern Europe to Brazil and then from Brazil to Bolivia and finally Mexico. At the same time, it is a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing characters to life with fidelity and imagination. The hinge connecting the two themes is the recurring image of striking a match. (Abramo's grandmother worked in a match factory in Brazil producing the brand called Fiat Lux, Latin for "let there be light.")




Abramo lives and works in Mexico City. When Words Without Borders asked local writer Lucia Duero, "what writers from here should we read?" she selected a single book by a living author: "Fiat Lux by Paula Abramo, a great story about the human journey and courage, marvelously captured in the poetics of everyday life."




The language of the poems is whimsical, committed, sometimes fierce, sometimes political, and always concerned with words, language, and languages. Each vignette evokes a moment. Together, they are nearly a novel.