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Tomás Eloy Martínez’s Peron Books Reviewed at Book Slut
Jesse Tangen-Mills has a review of three of Tomás Eloy Martínez’s books, Saint Evita, The Novel of Peron, and the Tango Singer at Book Slut. He gives a good overview of the books, ones I should have read some time ago, especially since I own a copy of the Novel of Peron in Spanish. Both [...]
Interview with Borges Translator Suzanne Jill Levine
3 Quarks Daily has the transcript of an interview with Suzanne Jill Levine about Jorge Luis Borges. It is a lengthy interview and worth a look. It goes beyond his stories and talks about his non fiction works, something that he is not necessarily well known for in the US. You can also listen to [...]
Juan Jose Saer, Mercè Rodored, Mathias Enard’s Zone Winter 2010 from Open Letter
Open Letter Press has released its fall catalog and it has some pretty exciting items in it. Of particular interest to me are Mercè Rodored’s short stories. I read her Death in Spring last summer and thought it was great. I don’t know much about Juan Jose Saer, but the description sounds interesting. And Mathias [...]
Spain’s Big 3 Publishers Agree on Ebooks – But It Won’t Help You in the US
Publishing Perspectives has a good article on Spain’s three biggest publishers (and many smaller ones) that have agreed a plan to publish ebooks. They will, naturally, have digital rights management, but will be in a the ePub format which is reader neutral. They will also have region controls on them and you can only buy [...]
Chilean Hernán Rivera Letelier Has Won the Alfaguara Prize
Chilean Hernán Rivera Letelier won the Alfaguara Prize yesterday, one of the more important prizes in Spanish speaking world with a prize of $175,000. According to the jury, his book El arte de la resurrección “mixes historical and social chronicle with elements of magic realism (mezcla la crónica histórica y social con elementos del realismo [...]
Spain in a Hundred Books
Letras Libres has an interesting list of the 100 books that represent the coming of modern Spain. Created by 4 authors, the list isn’t limited to Spanish authors (Hemingway makes an appearance), but the Spaniards on the list are interesting. I am familiar with many of the names but haven’t read all of them, many [...]
El insomnio de Bolívar (Bolivar’s Insomnia), by Jorge Volpi Reviewed at Letras Libres
After reading Jorge Volpi’s Season of Ash and some of his criticism I have been looking forward to seeing his prize wining El insomnio de Bolívar in print. Letras Libres has given it a mixed review. The basic point is Volpi says there is no national literature and Latin America isn’t filled with strange characters, [...]
Joe Sacco at Town Hall 1/13/2010
I went down to town hall to see Joe Sacco present his newest book, Footnotes In Gaza. It was 30 minute PowerPoint presentation with slides from his book followed by close to an hour of questions. The presentation was interesting, although if you read the book you’ll get a pretty much the same information. However, [...]
Ednodio Quintero Profiled in El País
El País profiles Ednodio Quintero on the publication of his book Combates, a collection of his short stories written between 1995 and 2000.While the stories do not appear to be magical realism, they are not realistic either. [...there is] an abundance of stories in a tough landscape that marks a world a bit anguished, almost [...]
Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco Reviewed at the LA Times
The LA Times gives a warm review to Joe Sacco’s newest book, Footnotes in Gaza. It is a slight shift from his usual approach in that he is reporting on a historical event. At the same time, though, he brings the issues forward to the endless conflict in Palestine. As always, though, he seems to [...]
Sex and the American Male Novelist
Katie Roiphe has an interesting article at the New York Times suggesting that if American Male novelists like Updike, Roth and Mailer wrote about in sex in graphic, yet sexist terms, newer writers such as David Foster Wallace and Michael Chabon have only gotten rid of the graphic element, but are implicitly navel gazing authors [...]
Vindication: The NY Times Doesn’t Like Season of Ash Either
Perhaps I’m being a little snarky, but when you write a negative review and NPR and the like says it is one of the best translated books of the year, you might feel a little annoyed. But now Scott at the Quarterly Conversation points out that the NY Times has given it a bad review, [...]
New Borges in May from New Directions
New Directions is going to publish a new book of Borges. It is unclear weather it has new material in English or is just a different approach at compiling his work. Everything and Nothing collects Borges’ highly influential work – written in the 1930s and ’40s – that forsaw the internet, quantum mechanics, and cloning. [...]
How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music – A Review
How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music Elijah Wald, 336 pg. The title is inflammatory and in many ways does the book a disservice because most of the book has little to do with the Beatles, or even Rock and Roll. The title after the colon is really [...]
Jorge Volpi on the Latin American Noir and Drug Novel
In part five of Jorge Volpi’s excellent lecture on Latin American writing he delves into the world of the narco novel. It is a fascinating list of works and it is a bit of a shame that they won’t make it into English, but since Americans would rather avoid the South than admit they are [...]
New Bolaño Novel and Excerpt from New Directions
New Directions is set to publish Bloaño’s Antwerp in April. If you can’t wait to read it then you can get a sample in Conjunctions:53.
Jorge Volpi – the Historical Novel in Latin America
In part four of Three Percent’s talk from Jorge Volpi, Volpi discusses recent historical novels in Latin America. What is interesting is that after saying there was no Latin American literature, he talks as if there were one. However, he sees in Latin American historical novels a reluctance to deal with the now. The ”historical [...]
Los Angeles, France, and the Search for a New Noir
Salonica has a great post from Larry Fondation about LA and the search for a writer that encompass the city. What makes it even more interesting is it was published in France as a kind of what Americans should do next. While Noir is a and LA are fascinating as our the American writers of [...]
Jorge Volpi on Bolaño and American Literary Reaction
Three Percent continues its serialization of Jorge Volpi’s comments on Latin American literature. In this section he takes American critics to task for building up a Bolaño myth much like that of Jack Kerouac so they could sell the story of a rebel. In contrast, the Spanish language press has looked at Bolaño more in [...]
Latin American Literature Does Not Exist Anymore – Jorge Volpi
Three Percent posted part two of Jorge Volpi’s thoughts on Latin American Literature, or perhaps better said, writing that comes from Latin America. Essentially, he states what should be obvious with some fore thought: not all writers in Latin America write about the same thing and the Boom and Magical Realism were nothing more than [...]
