Entering the Medical faculty, Mauro abandoned the course of studies in his second year and returned to Rio de Janeiro.
His greatest success was his novel My Sweet Orange Tree (Meu Pé de Laranja Lima) that tells about his own personal experiences and the shocks he suffered in his childhood with the abrupt changes of life.
The story centers around little José, a 5-year-old boy who is being raised in a poor family with many brothers and sisters in Bangu, in the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Partly because he rarely sees his parents, who are out to work long hours and only come back home at night, José plays all sorts of pranks on his neighbours and friends, leading his older brothers and sisters to think he is a naughty child.
He can find little comfort and support in his own family, except from his older sister Gloria, for whom José is a kind of protégé.
He then started working on a farm in Mazomba, carrying bananas, before becoming a fisherman and living on the coastline in Rio de Janeiro.
His prodigious story-telling skills, fabulous memory, brilliant imagination and experience of life led Mauro Vasconcos to feel he should become an author, and he started to write novels when he was 22 years old.
Although a possessor of a pleasant and light literature, creating a success with the public, the works of José Mauro de Vasconcelos are not fully recognized in Brazil.
[5][failed verification] He wrote : Because it was written in plain language, the book My Sweet Orange Tree became a popular choice for primary schools in Brazil to adopt it in their curricula.