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Mateus Soares de Azevedo (Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 24 January 1959) is a Brazilian writer, journalist, editor and translator. He has published a dozen books and more than a hundred essays and articles on the perennial philosophy and the mystical and esoteric currents of Christianity and Islam. His Men of a Single Book received the USA Best Books 2011 Awards.

Several of his writings have been translated into English, French, Spanish, and other languages.

Life
Born in Belo Horizonte in 1959, Mateus Soares de Azevedo spent his childhood in this city. In São Paulo – where he now lives – he attended elementary and high school at Colégio Santa Cruz, modern languages at the University of São Paulo, and journalism at the Pontifical Catholic University of that same city. He also studied International relations at George Washington University, USA, and obtained a master's in History of religions from the University of São Paulo.

His profession as a writer, journalist, editor and translator have prompted him to make journeys to Europe in order to contact religious authorities, collect material for his books, and interview Perennialist authors. In Europe, he deepened his knowledge of the three main branches of Christianity, visiting Catholic (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Ireland), Protestant (England, Holland, Switzerland and Germany), and Orthodox (Russia) countries. He also traveled to Muslim countries such as Iran, Turkey, Morocco, Bosnia and Tunisia, in search of direct contact with the Islamic reality.

Work
Azevedo is the author of about a dozen books in Portuguese on comparative religion, the perennial philosophy and the mystical and esoteric dimensions of Christianity and Islam in particular. Some of them have been translated in English, French, Spanish, and other languages.

Ordens Sufis no Islã (Sufi Orders in Islam) is the first book exclusively dedicated to the theme of Sufi brotherhoods published in Brazil. According to Kleiton Fontes, who reviewed the book, these fraternities are at the heart of what is most impressive in the Islamic world, from thought to the arts, from architecture to mysticism, clothing and even politics. The work assesses the impact of the Sufi brotherhoods on history; its doctrines, methods, and rituals; the advent of Islam in Persia; Sufism in contemporary Iran, among other topics.

Men of a Single Book: Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity and Modern Thought, published in the US in 2011, won the North American Literary Award for Book of the Year in the Comparative Religion category. It was thus characterized in the pages of the North American magazine Parabola: “This groundbreaking book by the award-wining Brazilian author analyzes what the author has perceptively phrased ‘secular fundamentalism’.” This work discusses militant fundamentalism, the hijacking of religion by intolerance, and also the modern phenomenon of what Azevedo calls anti-religious fundamentalism, especially that of atheist writers such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins.

Azevedo published more than a hundred essays on comparative religion, esoterism, and criticism of the materialist mentality of the modern world in the main Brazilian newspapers and magazines, such as O Estado de S. Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo, O Globo, História Viva, Gazeta Mercantil. . Some of them have been translated into English, French, Spanish, and Italian, and published in Sophia (USA), Sacred Web (Canada), Dossier H (Switzerland) and Ultreia (France). He is also the translator in Portuguese of Frithjof Schuon, a Swiss metaphysician of the Perennialist school; he also translated books from Martin Lings, William Stoddart, C.S. Lewis, etc.

Awards
Men of a Single Book: Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity and Modern Thought, published by World Wisdom Books, Bloomington/IN, USA, received the following awards:
 * The USA "Best Books 2011" Awards (sponsored by USA Book News), "Comparative Religion" category: winner.
 * "ForeWord" Book of the Year Award, "Religion" category: finalist.
 * Midwest Book Award, "Current Events" category: silver medal.

Books in English

 * Alchemy of Love: Sexuality & the Spiritual Life, Sophia Perennis, 2020, ISBN 9781597311830
 * Men of a Single Book: Fundamentalism in Islam, Christianity and Modern Thought, World Wisdom, 2010, ISBN 9781935493181
 * Ye shall know the truth: Christianity and the Perennial Philosophy, World Wisdom, 2005, ISBN 0941532690

Books in Portuguese

 * Ordens Sufis no Islã: Iniciação às confrarias esotéricas muçulmanas no Irã xiita e no mundo sunita, Polar, 2020, ISBN 978-85-867-7541-3
 * O Livro dos Mestres, Ibrasa, 2016, ISBN 978-85-348-0363-2
 * Filosofia Perene e Cristianismo: o desafio da modernidade, Ibrasa, 2016, ISBN 978-8534803649
 * Ocultismo e Religião em Freud, Jung e Eliade, co-authored with Harry Oldmeadow, Ibrasa, 2010, ISBN 978-8534803366
 * A Inteligência da Fé: Cristianismo, Islã e Judaísmo, Record/Nova Era, 2006, ISBN 978-85-7701-045-5
 * Mística Islâmica: atualidade e convergência com a espiritualidade cristã, 3rd edition, Vozes, 2001, ISBN 978-8532623577
 * Iniciação ao Islã e ao Sufismo, 4th edition, Record, 2000, ISBN 8501041815
 * Bob Marley, co-authored with Cassiano Quilicci, Brasiliense, 1984

Introductions

 * Martin Lings, Sabedoria Tradicional & Superstições Modernas, Polar, 1990, ISBN 978-8586775017
 * Silas Guerriero (ed.), O Estudo das Religiões: desafios contemporâneos, Paulinas, 2001, ISBN ‎978-8535610567
 * Frithjof Schuon, O Homem no Universo, Perspectiva, 2001, ISBN ‎978-8527302593
 * Frithjof Schuon, O Sentido das Raças, Ibrasa, 2002, ISBN 978-8534802048
 * William Stoddart, O Budismo ao seu alcance, Record, 2004, ISBN 978-8501066428
 * Frithjof Schuon, Para Compreender o Islã, Record, 2005, ISBN 85-7701-046-
 * William Stoddart, Remembering in a World of Forgetting: Thoughts on Tradition and Postmodernism, World Wisdom, 2006, ISBN 9781933316468
 * Frithjof Schuon, Forma & Substância nas Religiões, Sapientia, 2010, ISBN 978-8562052033
 * Frithjof Schuon, A Unidade Transcendente das Religiões, Irget, 2013, ISBN 978-9722009164
 * Faouzi Skali, Traços de Luz: Palavras iniciáticas sufis, D'Livros, 2013, ISBN 978-8586438448
 * Rama Coomaraswamy, Ensaios sobre a Destruição da Tradição Cristã, Irget, 2013, ISBN 8571820082
 * Frithjof Schuon, Ter um Centro, Polar, 2018, ISBN 978-8586775321

English

 * "The Perennial Philosophy is not for fools", co-authored with William Stoddart
 * "Short answer to three militant atheists"
 * "Rama Coomaraswamy: between Perennialism and traditional Catholicism"
 * "Frithjof Schuon & Sri Ramana Maharshi: a survey of the spiritual masters of the 20th Century"
 * "The role of sexuality in the spiritual life according to the Perennial Philosophy"

Portuguese

 * "A Ideologia do Estado Islâmico"
 * "A invenção da Terra de Israel"
 * "O Islã Hoje: entre Tradição e extremismo", co-authored with William Stoddart
 * "Outros Islãs"
 * "Francisco 1 e a mitologia do concílio Vaticano 2"
 * "Francisco põe poderosa ordem no coracão da igreja"
 * "Vaticano 2° se encerra com um dos seus ideólogos"
 * "O Sermão da Montanha segundo a Filosofia Perene"
 * "Deixem que os muçulmanos cuidem de si", co-authored with William Stoddart
 * "Islã Cristianizado"
 * "Sinais de Contradição na Opus Dei"

Other

 * "Frithjof Schuon et les grandes figures spirituelles du XXe siècle"
 * "Le Nembutsu et la doctrine de Hônen à Kyôto"
 * "La Vierge noire de Czestochowa"
 * "Ispahan ou l'empire du beau"