Fabián Casas

Fabián Casas
Argentina 1965
Born in the Boedo area of Buenos Aires. Poet,
narrator, essayist and journalist, he is one of
the outstanding figures of Argentina’s “90’s
generation¨. Studied philosophy, and edited
the poetry journal 18 Whiskys, which had a
major impact on the Buenos Aires literary
scene.
In 2007 he received Germany’s prestigious
Anna Seghers Prize for, as the jury said, “having an extraordinary poetry and for
his work’s being a source of inspiration for the authors of Latin America.” Ocio,
the film based on the novel of the same name and directed by Alejandro Lingenti and
Juan Villegas, was shown at the Berlin Festival to excellent reviews.
Guadalajara Book Fair ( edition 2011) selected him as one of the writers who
guarantees the continuation ofthe great Latinamerican writers of the XXth century.
His works have been translated into several languages.
“Fabián Casas constructs an extraordinarily convincing narrative world possessed of
subtle humour and a dry, intense lyricism”. Ignacio Echevarría
“One of the central poets in the objective line which beginning in the 90’s vigorously
renewed Argentine poetry…A sensivity where without any posturing Schopenhauer
and Astroboy play in the same league”. Edgardo Dobry, Babelia, the El País literary
supplement.
“One of the most audacious writers”. Care Santos, El Cultural. El Mundo
supplement
“There is much of the Arlt of El juguete rabioso in Casas“. Alan Pauls
Works
Los Lemmings (The Lemmıngs). Integrated stories, 2005, 2011
Horla City y otros (Horla Ciıty and Others). Complete poetry, 2010
Ensayos bonsai (Bonsai Essays). Essays, 2007
Ocio (Idleness). Novel, 2000
El spleen de Boedo (Boedo Blues). Poetry, 2004
Oda (Ode). Poetry, 2003
Rita viaja al cosmos con Mariano (Rıta and Mariano travel into space). Children’s story,
2009
El salmon (The Salmon). Poetry, 1996
Tuca. (Roach). Poetry 1990
Los Lemmings (The Lemmings)
Integrated stories
Santiago Arcos, editor, 2005. Alpha Decay, 2011.
152 pages
The voices that weave the stories in Los Lemmings y
otros draw an area in the new Argentine narrative:
the psychedelic, street Boedo of the late 20th
Century, as a political and aesthetic anthropology of
a generation, of a world.
“If these stories read like a short novel it is not on
account of any experiment with genre but because of
the continuity of their characters and their setting,
the Buenos Aires neighbourhood known as Boedo.
Rather than a setting, Boedo is a vocation, a destiny,
a complete world, with its border skirmishes, where
the tango has been replaced by punk and the
discotheque”. Babelia, El País.
“If these stories read like a short novel it is not on account of any experiment with genre
but because of the continuity of their characters and their setting, the Buenos Aires
neighbourhood known as Boedo. Rather than a setting, Boedo is a vocation, a destiny,
a complete world, with its border skirmishes, where the tango has been replaced by
punk and the discotheque”. Babelia, El País literary supplement.
“The rites of initiation into the adult world. The adult world seen as a place of exile for
those who were once children. Childhood itself evoked as a lost paradise that comes
with an unmistakable mythology and a very specific setting: Boedo, a working-class
Buenos Aires neighbourhood. With this common-place material Fabián Casas
constructs an extraordinarily convincing world possessed of subtle humour and dry,
intense lyricism. He achieves this thanks to a quality that he radiates on both the
stylistic and moral levels: authenticity. A sometimes slippery, dangerous category when
talking of literature. But which provides evidence and content in this deceptively light,
moving, entertaining book, which is situated in a space somewhere between a
collection of stories, a novel in progress, and a book of memoirs”. Ignacio Echevarría
“One of the most striking things about Casas’ prose is its precision. It never gets in its
own way. What works is the anecdote, and within its universe, orality of course plays
an important role. The power of the anecdote, its speed, its conviction, its variable
weight, light enough to get inside and back out but powerful enough for the knock-out
punch is what defines his way of narrating. His literature grows by itself, without ever
losing touch with those who read it. It is perhaps for this reason that his stories as so
similar to a good song”. Juan Terranova
Published by: Spanish: Santiago Arcos, Argentine/ Alpha Decay, Spain/
Portuguese Editora Rocco
For other countries available
Ocio (Idleness)
Novel
Santiago Arcos Editor, 2008. 105 pages
Andrés, main character of this short novel lives with
his father and brother. His mother, who brought some
order to all their lives and gave them some
connection, has died. Andrés locks himself up in his
room almost entirely cut off from the world listening to
music (he loves the second part of the Beatles’ Abbey
Road, particularly the medley that ends in “The End”),
reading, or writing texts he hopes to publish in a
literary journal that some of his friends may get going.
It is with these friends he goes out at night, takes
drugs…
Idleness has a rock ‘n roll spirit, but also has life
beyond these references.
Idleness, the film based on the novel and directed by Alejandro Lingenti and Juan
Villegas, was shown at the Berlin Festival to rave reviews.
“The power of the anecdote, its speed, its conviction, its variable weight, light enough
to get inside and back out but powerful enough for the knockout punch is what defines
his way of telling a story”. Juan Terranova. El interpretador
“What holds this together is an imploded, vigorous family under attack…but also the
Boedo neighbourhood, harsh, “annoying” yet fascinating for him who has experienced
it and writes about it like in a good Jack London story, or in some of Roberto Arlt’s
unforgettable plots”. Elvio Gandolfo. Revista Noticias
“The episodic nature, the constant movement of microstories blend into a “background
music“ which gives them support, the meticulous work with the language creates the
illusion of orality and defines a personal style”. Sandro Barrella. La Nación
“The reader can’t stop: he asks for more and more torture”. Guillermo Piro
Published by: Spanish Santiago Arcos/ Germany Rotbuch
For other countries available
Ensayos Bonsai (Bonsai Essays)
Essays
Planeta Argentina, 2007. 227 Pages
The paths Fabián Casas sets out in Ensayos Bonsai are
generally unpredictable: he can jump from Spinoza’s
concept of power to an essay by Marcelo Cohen to
Argentine letters and a bit further on to something Kurt
Cobain found funny to the search for a shoeshop in a
neighbourhood that was invisible until he needed it.
He can talk about Borges’ El escritor argentino y la
tradición, about Gombrowicz’ prologue to Ferdyduke and
Arlt´s to Los lanzallamas, all this topped off with his dog’s
age-old instinct for conscientiously digging a well.
Football World Cups and rock stars, family and friends,
the poetry of Eliot and Daniel Durand, film plots and the
thoughts of philosophers…all of this has its part in these
thirty-five essays.
There at the intersection of Oriental wisdom, rock ‘n roll, the ideals of messianic
revolutionaries, the great poets of the Americas, and football emerges Casas’ writing:
Zen Boedism.
“I am greatly stimulated by being told that one thing cannot be crossed with another”:
Why not? Casas wonders.
“There cannot be any more interesting writers”. Roberto Giaccaglia, Word Press
“’Literature in Ensayos Bonsai is not a body that obstructs what is said, but a natural
channel in which all this flow of poetry and life becomes written text…a book that
reveals the story of a life and a world of generational readings”. Mauro
Libertella, Página 12
“ The texts in this book include insightful reflections characteristic of the essay,
evocations and dramatic events that could form part of a short story as well as traces
and characters which are repeated, so we may well be talking about the missing links
of a great future novel.” Josefina Ludmer
“An exceptional knack for quoting”. Elvio Gandolfo
Published by: Planeta Argentina. For other countries available
Mario Levrero
Uruguay 1940-2004
Jorge Mario Varlotta Levrero, born in
Montevideo in 1940 and died there in 2004.
Levrero was a photographer, bookseller
comics script writer, humorist, crossword
author, creator of brain games. In his later
years, he directed a literary workshop.
A cult writer, later in life he was seen as a
master and point of reference for many of the
best writers in Latin America.
Levrero’s writing, structured around humour and unease, takes the form of a clean
prose based on the psychological that has been characterized as “introspective
realism”.
He is the author of an extensive body of literary work which includes journalistic writing
(some of the best articles are to be found in Irrupciones I and Irrupciones II), short
stories, novels and essays.
Levrero hated interviews and prologues. He was interested in self-hypnosis, believed in
telepathic phenomena, read about Zen, was addicted to computers, loved science,
hated being addressed in the “usted” form, could not abide solemnity in general, read
detective novels even at breakfast. He was a lover of cinema.
“Levrero is Kafka’s “everyday” flip side, a shadow of Camus with a comical take”. El
País.
“Style and imagination like Levrero’s are rare in Spanish-language literature”. Antonio
Muñoz Molina
“Mario Levrero is a genius”. Enrique Fogwil
Works
Caza de conejos (The rabbit hunt), 1986, 2012
La novela luminosa (The luminous novel), 2005
El discurso vacío (Empty talk), 1996
El alma de Gardel, 1996, 2012
Dejen todo en mis manos (Leave it all up to me), 1996
La banda del ciempiés (The centipede gang), 1989
Fauna, 1987
Desplazamientos, 1987
El lugar (The Place), 1982
París (París), 1980
Nick Carter… (Nick Carter has a good time while the reader is murdered and I lie
dying), 1975
La ciudad (The City), 1970
La novela luminosa (The luminous novel)
Novel
Alfaguara, 2004; Mondadori, 2008. 567 pages.
In this posthumously published work, Mario Levrero took
up the task of writing a novel in which he could narrate
certain extraordinary experiences that he called
“luminous”. An impossible task, as he later admitted, but
one on which he embarks in “Diary of the grant”. (Levrero
wrote this novel after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship.)
In each of the entries in this diary which covers a year of
his life, the author tells us about himself, his quirks, his
agoraphobia, his sleep disorders, his computer addictions,
his hypochondria and the meaning of his dreams. A
separate chapter is dedicated to women, particularly Chl,
who feeds him and takes him on the few walks he takes
around Montevideo in search of books by Rosa Chacel
and the detective novels he reads obsessively.
The fear of death, love, the loss of love, death, old age, poetry, and the nature of
fiction, the luminous, inexpressible experiences: there is room for all of it in this
monumental work.
“An incontrovertible figure in the new literature of Latin America”. El País
“A masterpiece” Damián Tabarovsky, El País
“The unique style of an author who redefines the notion of the autobiography.” Fogwill
“One of the most important novels in Latin American literature in recent years”. Letras
Libres
“From beginning to end, we are dealing with a challenging voyage through the lucid
head of a great writer”. Letras Libres
“La novela luminosa” is a updated versión of Robert Musil’s The Man without
Qualities”. Revista Universidad Diego Portales
“Cult book”, Fogwill
“….porous book which absorbs elements of the diary, the chronicle, the essay, auteur
literary criticism…The book which establishes Levrero as one of the most profound,
most mature writers in Hispano-American literature of recent decades.” Víctor Coral
Published world-wide in Spanish by Mondadori/Portuguese Editora Rocco.
For other countries available
El discurso vacío (Empty talk)
Novel
Trilce, Montevideo, 199; Interzona, 2006; Mondadori,
Caballo de Troya, España, 2007; Debolsillo, España,
2008; Mondadori, Argentina, 2011.
“When one reaches a certain age, one is no longer the
protagonist of one’s actions: everything is merely the
consequence of previous actions. What one sowed has
been growing surreptitiously and all of a sudden explodes
into a sort of jungle that surrounds one on all sides, and
the days can be opened up solely by dint of machete
blows and then only to be choked out by the jungle again;
and soon one discovers that any hope of escape is
completely illusory, in that the jungle spreads faster that
we can clear it and above all because the very notion of
escape is erroneous; we cannot escape because we do
not want to escape, and we do not want to escape
because we have nowhere to go, because the jungle is one’s self, and escape would
imply some sort of death or simply death. And even if there was once a time when one
could die a certain kind of seemingly inoffensive death, now we know that those deaths
were the seeds we sowed of the jungle we now are”. (Fragment)
Considered his masterwork by many of his readers and some critics, Empty talk, is the
story of a writer who spends his time observing his own calligraphy in search of
answers about his identity. In the midst of a family crisis, fighting with his runaway wife,
a dog with a yearning for freedom and a child who constantly interrupts his sacred
concentration, the writer survives by grasping onto what he considers a maxim of
calligraphy: “beautiful script, beautiful me”.
These sinuous lines give him answers about the meaning of writing, about the anxieties
of creative writing and particularly about the always magical relationship of writing with
life.
“An essential book, a cult work”. Rodolfo Fogwill
“Each of his books is better than the one before”. Damián Tabarovsky, El País
Published in Spanish world-wide by: Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
París
Novel
El Cid, 1980; Mondadori, Debolsillo, España, 2008;
Editorial Carmel, Israel, 2010. 155 pages.
Prologue by Constantino Bertolo
Along with The Place and The City, Paris makes up
the Involuntary Trilogy (involuntary in the sense that
the author only realized afterwards that he had written
three novels in a row with the city as a common
theme).
Paris is the story of someone who returns to a city
where he has perhaps never been before. His return
voyage has taken three hundred centuries and what he
finds is the rusty shadow of a dead time: a taxi full of
cobwebs with the corpse of the driver at the wheel, a
thick layer of dust covering it all, a strange encounter
with Marcel, the manager of a shop where he, it seems, had once worked.
A Paris shrouded in the elusive matter of dreams and a protagonist who senses that he
has come back to this city in expectation of some event which he cannot point his
finger on. In a leap into the void, to meet death, the character discovers that he has
wings and can fly and so can be reborn and free himself from a lost time and an
absurd, useless existence.
“Like Felisberto Hernández, Levrero is, above all, a writer about that which is ghostly,
an alchemist who works with intimate spectres and the detritus of experience. Oliverio
Coelho, Los Inrockuptibles
“A legendary writer, Mario Levrero has gone from warranting consideration as an
author of incontrovertible importance to that of a writer of the stature of the great
names in Latin American literature: Borges, Onetti, Piglia, Aira, Fogwill”. Constantino
Bertolo
Published in Spanish world-wide by Random House Mondadori; in Hebrew by
Carmel. For other countries available
La ciudad (The city)
Novel
Tierra Nueva, Uruguay, 1970; Plaza & Janés 2000;
Mondadori, Debolsillo, España, 2008; Editorial Carmel ,
Israel, 2010. 200 pages
Prologue by Ignacio Echevarría
Along with The Place and Paris, The City comprises the
Involuntary Triology (involuntary in the sense that the
author only realized afterwards that he had written three
novels in a row with the city as a common theme).
At the beginning of The City, the protagonist, having just
arrived at the bleak dwelling in which he is planning to
live, goes out to find a place nearby to buy kerosene.
Then he goes for cigarettes, dry his clothes and other
innocuous tasks that slowly take him further and further
away from his home and into an alien city hazily
defined.
“Life is astonishingly short. Now, in my memory, it is so compressed that I can hardly
understand, for example, how a young person can decide to ride to the next village
without being afraid that—apart from accidents—even the time allotted to a normal,
happy life is far too short for such a journey.”
This quote from Kafka contains one of the keys to this novel, for the writing of which
Levrero himself admits that he “tried to imitate [Kafka] with the greatest precision at my
disposal”.
Published in Spanish world-wide by Mondadori; in Hebrew by Carmel/Portuguese by
Rocco Editora.
For other countries available
El lugar (The place)
Novel.
El Péndulo, Argentina, 1984. Mondadori, Debolsillo,
Spain, 2008; Editorial Carmel, Israel, 2010.160 pages.
Prologue by Julio Llamazares
The Place is the second novel of the Involuntary
Trilogy (involuntary in the sense that the author only
realized afterwards that he had written three novels in
a row—The City, The Place and Paris—with the city
as a common theme).
A man wakes up in an unfamiliar room. He is lying on
the floor, in the dark, in street clothes. He is alarmed to
realize that he has no idea how he got there. No
matter how hard he tries, he cannot remember. His
mind begins to weave a series of hypotheses but
without finding one that conforms to the logic of the
situation. So he decides to investigate. After examining the place in which he finds
himself, he goes into another room like the first with two doors, one an entrance and
one an exit, in which the passage of time is marked by lights going on and off.
“Humour, fantasy, a stifling Kafka-like mood…If we add a few drops of acid, traces of
Freud and Richard Lester, the aroma of the best Chandler, the sadness of Gardel and
the tango, the disquiet of the sleepless and the imperturbability of Onetti, we have
ourselves an approximate picture of this book and its author….”
“An author who has surprised me more than anything has in a long time.” Julio
Llamazares
Published in Spanish world-wide by Random House Mondadori; in Hebrew by
Carmel. For other countries available.
Dejen todo en mis manos (Leave it all up to me)
Novel
Random House Mondadori, Argentina; Caballo de Troya,
España 2007, 121 pages
A fairly unsuccessful writer who finds himself in a
somewhat desperate financial situation is offered a deal
by an editor. The company will give him an advance and
publish his novel if he can discover the whereabouts of a
certain Juan Pérez who had earlier sent them an
exception manuscript from Penurias,a town far from the
capital, without a return address. The writer accepts the
assignment, and in his improvised role as a detective,
travels to the town to try to locate the person behind the
apparent pseudonym.
From this moment on, suppositions and investigations get
all mixed up in his adventures as a writer turned detective:
his contacts with the town prostitute, with the old, now
retired school teacher, with the local columnist, with a rather impassioned amateur
poetess, with a childhood enemy and with an enchanting travel companion who in the
end is to help him solve the mystery of the unknown writer.
Written under the guise of a detective novel with abundant doses of humour.
“Dejen todo en mis manos is beautiful, meaningful, and important...it is not only a good
way to spend some time, but also provides us with keys for understanding a part of the
savage spirit of our times...” Hotel Kafka
Published in Spanish world-wide by Random House Mondadori/ Brasil, Rocco
Editora / Francia, Éditions de L’Arbre
For other countries available
Nick Carter se divierte mientras el lector es
asesinado y yo agonizo
(Nick Carter has a good time while the reader is
murdered and I lie dying)
Novel. Random House Mondadori. Argentina, 2009. 150
pages.
In light of a series of death threats, the Ponsobys, an old
aristocratic family decide to hire detective Nick Carter.
To solve the case all he has to do is find a band of
criminals and ne’er-do-wells who like to call themselves
the “sea creatures” and locate their leader, the horrible
Watson. For help he calls on Tinker, his faithful
companion (a little man small enough to fit in his
briefcase.) Nick’s method is simple: he relies on the
aesthetic judgment events provide him with.
He always solves his cases but he in fact no longer cares.
Levrero offers us an experimental avant-garde aesthetic
that seeks to go beyond the boundaries of literature by
writing in the first and third person and addressing the reader and Nick Carter himself.
A parody of the cop novel, the installment novel, even the superhero genre. Embedded
in the text are multiple readings that generate a reflection on identity, on the meaning of
life…
“A really entertaining story”. Letras Libres
“Mario Levrero has a marvelous gift for seeing things the way they are and the way
they are not at the same time”. Revista Ñ, Clarín
“Levrero defies convention”. Damián Tabarovsky, El País
Published in Spanish world-wide by Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
La banda de Ciempiés (The centipede gang)
Novel
Random House Mondadori, Argentina 2010. 190 pages
A terrorific gigantic worm formed by fifty men covered by
a cloth wreaks terror in the city and forces private
detective Carmody Trailler into action. Smithe Andrews,
the police chief, suspects that this dangerous band of
criminals is of Chinese background and orders a raid that
leads to a series of diplomatic incidents, kidnappings,
conspiracies, chases, acts of vengeance and
international reprisals.
This is merely the opening of The Centipede Gang, a
wild adventure movie which masterfully combines
genres, humour, digressions and detours to create a
dizzying universe where Mario Levrero once again finds
a dazzling, unexpected way out.
.
“A very entertaining piece of pulp fiction”. Elvio Gandolfo
Published in Spanish world-wide by Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
Caza de conejos (The rabbit hunt)
Collection of thematically related short stories
Editorial Zorro Rojo, 2012. 166 pages.
Illustrated book. Illustrations by Sonia Pulido
A feverish rabbit hunt full of the most unlikely traps
and bait. Bears disguised as rabbits or babies in
wicker baskets that work well as rabbit lures. A
well-organized expedition led by the idiot, who
imagines erotic rabbits to masturbate as he drools.
Laura, who hunts naked and traps rabbits between
her legs. Evaristo, the plumber, who is
disappointed when he catches empty rabbits with
no clockwork inside.
Rabbits disguised as forest rangers, who love
Schubert, and the den Águeda provides for them. “She is almost always lying on the
carpet with her legs slightly open. One can sit at a prudent distance and if one is
patient and makes no noise, one will in time observe a white, nervous little head pop
out to take a look”.
A work that “could be the rabbits’ trap made of words designed to finally catch people”.
Published by: Spanish Editorial Zorro Rojo
For other countries available
Lina Meruane
Chile, 1970
Is one of the most prominent female voices in Chilean
contemporary narrative.
Novelist, essayist, and cultural journalist. She is the
author of a host of short stories appeared in various
anthologies and magazines in Spanish, English,
German and French.
She has also published a collection of short stories, Las
Infantas (Chile 1998, Argentina 2010), as well as three
novels, Póstuma (Chile 2000, Portugal 2001), Cercada
(Chile 2000) and Fruta Podrida (Chile & México 2007).
The latter won the Best Unpublished Novel Priza
awarded by Chile´s National Council of the Culture and
the Arts in 2006 and was a finalist for Mexico’s Sor
Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize.
She is the winner of the Anna Seghers Prize, awarded to her by the Akademie der
Künste, in Berlin, Germany, 2011.
Meruane has received writing grants from the Arts Development Fund of Chile (1997),
the Guggenheim Foundation (2004) and National Endowment for the Arts (2010).
Cultural journalist, columnist and stringer for written media, she currently is the editor of
Brutas Editoras, an independent publishing house located in New York City.
Holder of a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University, Meruane
currently teaches World and Latin American Literature and Creative Writing at New
York University.
Works
Sangre en el ojo (Blood in the Eye) Novel, 2012
Las Infantas (The Princesses) Stories, 1998, 2010
Fruta Podrida (Rotten Fruit) Novel, 2007
Póstuma (Posthumous) Novel, 200, 2001
Cercada (Fenced-in) Novel, 2000
Sangre en el ojo (Blood in the Eye)
Novel, Eterna Cadencia, Caballo de Troya, 2012.
172 pages.
She was at a party in New York, looking into her purse
under the bed for the needle that she was about to
shoot up her arm when Lucine became conscious of
something she had been warned that would inevitably
happen. Something like an artifical fire goes through
your head, but you don’t see fire. Instead, it looks like
blood pouring into your eyeball, the most strikingly
beautiful blood that she has ever seen, the most
unheard of, the most aweful, but only she can notice it.
With a remarkable narrative skill and a specific
language, Lina Meruane tells the medical itinerary of
Lucina, a Chilean writer, between New York and
Santiago, from the night she suffered the brain stroke
until the moment she wakes up after the operation. In
this trip, total blindness, uncertainty and the endless visits to her doctor, the moving
into another apartment and a travel to her country of birth will untie her familiar ghosts
and her most perverse wishes, pushing her relationship with Ignacio, her boyfriend, to
the limit.
Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, vertiginous and caustic novel about
the relation between the body and the science, the wounds and the lack of roots, the
demands and unconditional love.
“A novel where not only the blood poured by the eyes is palpitating; so is good
literature” Babelia, España, Rodrigo Pinto
“A merciless book.” Sylvia Molloy, Chile
“A powerful novel.” Federico Falcó, Argentina
“Meruane’s writing is acid, so corrosive that sometimes sentences dissolve before
meeting the end that they deserved.” Alvaro Enrique, El Universal, México
“Writing here is developed as a powerful paw”. Elvira Navarro Revista Qué leer,
España
“An authentic novel written not from the edges, but from inside the sick body, with a
powerful, intense narrator… who doesn’t escape from speaking the plain truth.”
Gustavo Pablos, Diario La Voz, Argentina
“A small work of art.” Radio Mitre, Argentina
Published by: España Caballo de Troya/ Argentina: Eterna Cadencia/ Chile
Mondadori
Fruta podrida (Rotten fruit)
Novel
Fondo de la Cultura Económica, 2007. 187 pages.
Finalist, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, 2008.
Zoila del Campo and her sister María, known as The
Elder, live in a small country town called Ojo Seco (Dry
Eye). Here their lives revolve around Zoila’s
degenerative disease (diabetes) and María’s job at a
fruit company.
It is in this setting that we watch the unfolding of a
family drama generated by the protagonist’s condition
and the intricate paths that emerge from her rebellion
against it, creating situations that give the story surreal,
fantastic, open tones.
“The author remains faithful to her radical aesthetic choice in favor of language as
expressive materia”. El Mercurio
“…a powerful text that is a demonstration of her talent as an author with an implacable
writing in which the crudest images, a honed, penetrating language, and a bold
narrative structure take the reader down a rigorous path full of questions”. El Mercurio
“A novel that speaks with expressive force, evocative quality and live voices.
Meruane´s intensely precise writing takes us on an adventure of surprises and
revelations”. Julio Ortega
Published by: Spanish worldwide Fondo de la Cultura Económica.
For other countries available
Las infantas (The princesses)
Integrated stories
Planeta 1998. Eterna Cadencia 2010. 176 pages.
In a tone that recalls Perrault’s classic tales for
children, Lina Meruane narrates the adventures and
misadventures of two princesses who leave the
palace as their father is about to use them to back a
wager in a game of cards. These ten tale-like
episodes intertwine with eleven longer short stories,
contemporary in style, to reveal the cruelty and
ambivalence of a world, old and new, where
childhood is still to be understood.
Fantasies, want, wishes, games shot through from
start to finish with an erotic tension that is resolved in
a way violating all convention. A moving, as well as
disturbing book.
“Lina Meruane’s prose has great literary force: it emerges from the hammer blows of
conscience, but also from the ungraspable and from pain”. Roberto Bolaño
“…Lina Meruane stands in the front ranks of our narrative, giving the reader a wink with
her unique way of tossing out little verbal darts that make her worthy of the highest
praise”. Milton Aguilar
“…Lina Meruane has a calling to the narrative and possesses a powerful language”.
Camilo Marks
Published by: Spanish worldwide Eterna Cadencia.
For other countries available
Póstuma (Posthumous)
Novel
Planeta Chile, 2000; Oficina de Livro, Portugal, 2001.
200 pages.
Amanda and her friends at a endless late-night card
party. An absent mother who is hardly mentioned. And
Renata, the girl who can only enter the world of her
grandmother through literature, that undefinable place
at the boundary of desire. Writing as in a mechanism of
convex mirrors allows the narrator to bring back family
history through episodes where fact and fiction blur into
one another. What really happened in each scene and
what has been distorted in recollection? Renata tries to
retrieve her biography as she sees herself in another
cruel, mysterious girl. But perhaps we are wrong and it
is Amanda who is recounting each event. From this side
and from the other, the ashes of memory are consumed
and questions are raised. And in the longing for a past
that is recounted in bits and pieces, and in this meticulously focused past, the registers
alternate. Two novels are symmetrically organized into one. A single image refracting
the fate of these women linked by eroticism and death. A hazy image for piece of
writing that can only be a posthumous exercise.
“… the very first moment reveals her writing’s striving to avoid the obvious turn of the
phrase, to give into the facileness of mere action….It is a pleasure to read a Lina
Meruane who is never afraid of words”. Javier Edwards Renard, El Mercurio
Published by: Spanish Planeta/ Portuguese Oficina do Livro
For other countries available
Cercada (Fenced-in)
Novel
Cuarto Propio, 2000. 96 pages
Cercada is a short novel about an aspect of Chile´s
return to democracy, not touched upon by the
literary accounts of that era: the relationships
between the children of the military and the children
of those persecuted for political reasons. Lucía, the
daughter of an officer in charge of torture has
remained on the political sidelines until she gets
involved with two men whose father was killed for
his political ideas. A dramatic triangle unfolds in a
tense narrative full of suspense, whose surprising
denouement is explained by the phrase that begins
the book: “We are all masked hunters.”
“An undeniable talent. Consistency and versatility. An implacable eye”. Javier Edwards,
El Mercurio.
Published by: Spanish Cuarto Propio.
For other countries available
Selva Almada
Argentina, 1973
She is the author of several poetry books and
anthologies of short stories. Her first novel, El viento
que arrasa, has had excellent reviews and has been
praised by the media. It has been selected as one of
the best books published in 2012.
It includes several compilations of short stories, among
them Die Nacht des Kometen (Alemania, 2012); De
puntín (Mondadori, 2008); Poetas argentinas 19611980 (Ediciones Del Dock, 2007); Narradores del siglo
XXI (Opción Libros, GCBA, 2006);Una terraza propia.
Nuevas narradoras argentinas (Norma, 2006).
She had an scholarship by the National Art Fund for a
research project about female adolescents.
Since 2006 she is a co-director of the series of lectures “Carne Argentina” at FM La
Tribu. She coordinates creative writing workshops in Buenos Aires and other places in
Argentina.
“Selva Almada moves about on a map of fiction: this is not urban literature, it is not
literature about young people, nor about outsiders, nor about people who spend their
time sniffing coke. It is literature of the provinces like that of Carson McCullers, for
example. Regional in contrast with global cultures but not a fiction of manners. Just the
opposite of much urban fiction, which is literature of manners without being
regional” Beatriz Sarlo, Diario Perfil
“Selva Almada’s prose has a touch of the Faulkner of While I lay dying, but put through
(and somewhat softened by) the filters of the earthy light of the cotton fields (those of
the south of that South) and the clean clothes worn by country people to Sunday
mass.” Germán Machado
"Selva Almada reinvents the imaginative rural world of a country (...) She is an author
gifted with very uncommon power and sensitivity". Rolling Stone Magazine
Works
Ladrilleros (Brickmakers) Novel, 2013
El viento que arrasa. Novel, 2012
Una chica de provincia. Short stories 2007
Niños. Short stories, 2005
Mal de muñecas. Poems, 2003
Ladrilleros (Brickmakers)
Novel. Mardulce editora, 2013
Pájaro Tamai and Marciano Miranda, two twentyyear-olds, are dying in a deserted amusement park.
The story begins almost at its end, just a little after
the two main characters have faced off in a knife
fight, the culmination of an enmity that has pitted
them against one another since childhood having
been bequeathed to them by their fathers, and just
a little before their impending deaths.
The present in Ladrilleros is a state of impending
death, at moments marked by hallucinations:
Marciano is visited by the ghost of his father, who
was murdered when he was an adolescent, a father
he had sworn to avenge,in a promise he could not
keep; Pájaro is also visited, as in a returning
nightmare, by his abusive father who disappeared
years earlier.
Interspersed among the hallucinantions, which are narrated by an omniscient narrator
but from the point of view of each character, a device causes narrator and character to
blur, to merge constantly, flashbacks tell the story of the two families, the Tamais and
the Mirandas, a story of latent rancor. Of this rancor as well as of tragedy is born a
love between Pájaro and Ángel, the youngest of the Mirandas: a love that saves and
damns, which revives the hatred and which, inexorably, leads to death.
A sort of homosexual Romeo and Juliet, Ladrilleros is set in a hostile environment, full
of tough, fight-prone, drunken men; of lonely children who grow up any way they can;
of passionate, violent, sexual loves; of merciless suns that dry up everything they
touch.
*The novel’s title alludes to the protagonists’ trade: making bricks in a traditional
manner is a fairly common job among the working classes of northeastern Argentina,
the setting of the story.
Will be published by: Mardulce Editora
Andrés Rivera
Argentina 1928
Marcos Ribak, to cite his real name, a
textile worker, writer and journalist, was
born into a family of immigrant workers
and as a member of the Communist
Party has been a part of the vicissitudes
of the Argentine workers’ movement.
He began his activities as a writer and
journalist in the 1950’s.
Rese arch into history as a starting point, material related to politics, autobiographical
elements, oppressive forms of power, betrayal, violence, all this projected on a web of
human conflicts is the identifying stamp of his narrative poetry.
He has received various major prizes and awards, among the most notable being: El
Premio Nacional de Literatura (The National Prize for Literature), for his novel, The
Revolution is an Eternal Dream in 1992; el Segundo Premio Municipal de Novela (The
Second Municipal Novel Prize) in 1985; el Premio Konex de Platino (the Platinum
Konex Prize) (1994); and in 2011, el Premio Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Prize for
Literature of the National Arts Fund), the institution’s highest award, given each year to
recognize the work by an artist or writer who, through his intellectual and artistic work,
has made a positive contribution to the enrichment of Argentina’s cultural heritage.
“Andrés Rivera is the Argentinian Joseph Conrad.” Juan Gelman
“…he turns each of the sentences in which he unfolds his narrations into solid,
unmoving stones.” Antonio Jiménez Morato, Público.
“I have known many writers and artists. Almost all are worse than their work. Andrés
Rivera is one of the few people has the stature of what he writes.” Guillermo Saavedra,
Clarín
Works
Hay que matar. Novel, 2001, 2012
Kadish. Novel, 2011
Guardia Blanca. Novel, 2009
Estaqueados. Short stories, 2008
El profundo sur. Novel, 1999, 2006, 2007
Esto por ahora. Novel, 2005
Cría de asesinos. Short stories, 2004
Ese manco Paz. Novel, 2003
Hay que matar. Novel, 2001, 2012
Tierra de exilio. Novel, 2000
La lenta velocidad del coraje. Short stories, 1998
El farmer. Novel, 1996, 2000
El verdugo en el umbral, 1994. 1995 Club de los XIII prize.
Mitteleuropa. Short stories, 1993
La sierva. Novel,1992. Best book of 1992 by Fundación del Libro
El amigo de Baudelaire. Novel 1991, 2011
La revolución es un sueño eterno. Novel, 1987, 2010. Argentina’s National Prize for
Literature.
En esta dulce tierra. Novel, 1984. Second in Municipal Prize for Literature
Nada que perder. Novel, 1982
Una lectura de la historia. Short stories, 1982
Ajuste de cuentas. Short stories, 1972
Cita. Short stories, 1965
Sol de sábado. Short stories, 1962
Los que no mueren. Novel, 1959
El precio. Novel, 1957.
El Profundo Sur
Novel. Emecé 2006; Veintisieteletras, 2007. 96 pages
Why does a man kill?
1919. The world is seething with revolutions. Buenos Aires
bleeds during its Tragic Week. The Patriotic League and
the Army repress the strikers indiscriminately. Bolsheviks,
Jews, workers, anarchists, foreigners… all of them are
“the same” and all are “enemies of the Fatherland”. On a
street like any other, the fates of four men intersect and
interchange. Victims and executioners, guided by chance
at the imprecise boundaries between civilization and
barbarism. Based on this historical event and brief, but
forceful biographical sketches of the characters, Andrés
Rivera, winner of Argentina’s National Literature Prize and
one of Latin America’s most important contemporary writers, reflects on the scaffolding
of violence, resentment and frustration, on the naïveté of certain passions and the
fragility of existence. The restraint and narrative rhythm of his prose, the choice of
words and its silences brings us a work of unusual, beautiful intensity.
“This novel is pure muscle”. Javier Rodríguez Marcos, El País.
“…a powerful voice, with brilliant, overwhelming, sharp metaphors….Rivera knows how
to touch sensitive chords, how to make a short story hurt”. Emma Rodríguez, El
Mundo.
“…he turns each of the sentences in which he unfolds his narrations into solid,
unmoving stones.” Antonio Jiménez Morato, Público.
“Rivera’s prose explodes with the implacable effectiveness of a lethal weapon: it avoids
long sentences and submits the narrative rhythm to a machine-gun effect devoid of
pathos.” ABC
“A classic of current Argentina literature.” Babelia
“To try to define Andrés Rivera is to talk about an impressive literary force. A spell that,
at times, is hard to explain.” Eduardo Belgrano Rawson.
“ Rivera’s narration lies….It is the creation of a truth….Rivera does not write to be , he
writes to find the truth. There is in Rivera a fictional construction of the past. That is not
even past. Because Rivera does not write about it, but about the present.” José Pablo
Feinmann,Clarín.
“The deep voice of Rivera, the moist sound of his prose…a language which…crumbles
and settles until it reaches a thickness that borders on the poetic.” Susana Szwarc, La
Nación.
Published in Spanish worldwide by Veintisiete Letras
Hay que matar
Novel. Alfaguara 2001. Seix Barral 2012 116 pages
In the South of the South there was an empire. The
empire did not dissolve: it has other, more impersonal
names. But it still dictates the law. It still kills.
Milton Roberts, a Welshman, had a bit of land in the
South of the South, some sheep, four or five dogs and two
or three horses and a son named Byron Roberts. Until
The Company made its offer and he uttered a fearless No.
Bill Farrel had escaped, starving, from Ireland and was
the police commissioner in the South of the South. He has
a wife called Rosario. With Bill Farell, Byron Roberts
learned, among other things, the trade of killing.
In the South of the South there is more than enough oil
and violence. Power is the property of a few, but
vengeance, unlike sex and whisky, is one of the things that cannot be bought or sold.
There a man kills the way Andrés Rivera writes: in search of knowledge and justice.
Published world-wide by Seix Barral
El amigo de Baudelaire
Novel. Seix Barral 2008; Veintisiete Letras, 2011. 88 pages
“I like the smell of the country, Charles. On horseback I
contemplate for long, long minutes thousands of sheep like
a grey, motionless sea….Do you know, Charles, what the
true smell of the pampa is? I do: the smell of money”.
( Extract)
A straightforward story of power and its motives.
El amigo de Baudelaire starts off in Argentine history but
then goes beyond the boundaries of time and space to treat
in a stripped-down, uncompromising manner man’s
relationship with failure, power, fear and sex.
Saúl Bedoya, wealthy, cultured, perverse, a child of the civil wars that laid the ground
for the triumph of liberalism in Argentina, remembers his dissipated youth in Paris. He
was one of those idle heirs of gauchos come into money who threw away their fortunes
in search of a title, amusement and a veneer of high European culture. Those
Argentinians who “no longer exist”, as Céline put it. Now old, “obsessive and obscene”
he translates in his private notes what is happening in a country in a process of
formation: a new bourgeoisie, cynical and voracious, that will use resources of any kind
to gain power. Everything can be bought and sold—land, cattle, stocks, railways,
newspapers, presidential candidates, men and women—for less than the price of a
steer: even France’s best poet, with whom he claims to have shared drink and
confessions in Paris: “Baudelaire, in Buenos Aires, would have been a high-class
whore. Whom I would keep.”
The caustic, implacable protagonist subjects his conscience to a rigorous examination
in which he discovers both his ambition and his indifference. He admits his sexual and
affective perversions, his readings and plagiarisms, his own crime and his fear of being
murdered. And he reflects in a deep, straightforward way on what a “nation” is, calling
on the spirits of Baudelaire and Sarmiento, the intellectual who imagined a modern
Argentina, which he inspired and whose victim he became.
Relentless, direct, rigorous prose, it seduces in every line. El amigo de Baudelaire, like
an Argentine Gatsby, shows in an exceptional manner what lurks behind wealth and its
motivations.
“…a forceful voice, with brilliant, overwhelming, sharp metaphors….Rivera knows how
to touch sensitive chords, how to make a short story hurt”. Emma Rodríguez, El
Mundo.
“Andrés Rivera writes about everyday life, which with the passage of time becomes
history that of a country like Argentina, splashed with ideological, labour and political
movements that have resulted in various dictatorships that have sown its days with
victims. Like his characters, today he feels a profound disenchantment, or perhaps, like
a defeated man who has not ceased to postulate with his literature some of the utopias
he dreamed of and through which he wanted to change the world”. Pedro E.
Domene, La tormenta en un vaso.
“This is indeed a narrator with his own voice and tone”. Revista De Libros
“The problem set out in each work gives us a human dimension of man in the face of
failure, of power, of neglect and in the face of life and death, all these universal, eternal
themes in literature.” Teresita Mauro, Espéculo (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
Published in Spanish worldwide by Veintisiete Letras
La sierva
Novel. Alfaguara 1999; Seix Barral 2009. 75 pages
Was recognized in 1993 by Fundación el Libro as the
best work published in 1992
La Sierva tells of the intense, passionate relationship
between a servant, Lucrecia, and a judge, Saúl Bedoya,
in the Buenos Aires of the second half of the 19th
Century. Through the relationship between these
characters, Rivera delves into the world of power, politics,
corruption and the complexities of the human soul.
Lucrecia is a woman of bastard origin willing to do
anything to become the mistress. But while she did not
hesitate to kill her step-father in order to take his place
and his meager belongings, she is only a servant.
Her master is Judge Saúl Bedoya, a notable figure of the emerging Argentine
bourgeoisie, who, fascinated by her savage beauty and temperament, has decided to
overlook Lucrecia’s guilt. Subjected to the all the whims and perversities of her master,
Lucrecia merely applies herself to them as a deviant manner of learning the rites of
power.
From the eccentric point of view of a woman obsessed by command and wealth, the
story illuminates the duplicity of a class dazzled by its own opulence.
Steeped in electrifying, dark eroticism, written in a dry, forceful prose.
“La Sierva is another fundamental novel by an indispensable writer”. Clarín
Published in Spanish world-wide by Seix Barral
Guardia blanca
Novel. Seix Barral, 2009. 160 pages
In a country of rich landowners and middle classes not even
the force of the wind could dispel the “abominable oblivion
thirty thousand people had disappeared into.” Like a sign of ill
fortune, there was a succession of unpunished crimes,
contract killings, deaths that no longer related to old utopias.
Now people kill for power, for money, for lust.
Growing old is sad, and incurable. Pablo Fontán lives alone in
the Belgrano district, in an apartment he inherited from his
mother. At seven in the evening he pours himself a whisky
and sits down in front of the television. Now and then he
looks out the window in the direction of the river, lights a
cigarette, reads. The memories come one after the other and some return obsessively:
the images of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, certain things he has read, bits of
journeys, a brief visit he paid on Juan Carlos Onetti, the anti-Bolshevik opinions of a
tour guide in Prague. While capitalism is crumbling all over the world and old social
struggles survive through nostalgia, Guardia Blanca reminds us that, beyond the
bloody wars and enthusiastic revolutions, almost nothing has changed. The pages of
history and the news in the papers confirm that there is no power without money and
that absolution can be bought for a set price.
“Andrés Rivera again gratifies the reader with this magnificent, highly critical novel, full
of fine irony, written with the refinement and the richness of language characteristic of
one of Argentina’s best contemporary writers”. Página 12.
“Rivera masterful stages this tragic character from which the personal lives of men
cannot escape.” Revista Eñe
Published in Spanish world-wide by Seix Barral
María Teresa Andruetto
Argentina, 1954
Winner of the Hans Christian
Andersen Award 2012.
The construction of social and
individual identity, the sequels of the
dictatorship in her country and the
female universe are some of the main
lines of her work. Her books are read
both by young and adult readers,
breaking the generational barriers.
She has been working for the last 30
years in children literature, where she took part on the training of school teachers; she
has also founded centers of study and specialized magazines, has directed collections
and taken part in reading plans. She is guest teacher in many graduate and
posgraduate courses and invited author in congresses, seminars, fairs and meetings,
in her country and abroad. Her books are subject of study in Argentinian, American and
European Universities.
Her writing won her the awards of Luis Tejada (1993), Fondo Nacional de las Artes
(National Fund for the Arts) 2002, and in 2001 she was finalist of the Award Romulo
Gallegos with her novel Lengua Madre. She was included in the Honour Lists of the
IBBY, has been awarded the Iberoamerican SM Prize in 2009.
Her work has been used as a base for short movies, musical and poetical shows,
theatre adaptations and other events.
www.teresaandruetto.com.ar
Works Adults
Cacería (Hunting Game). Short stories, 2012
Ribak, Reedson, Rivera. (Conversations with Andrés Rivera). Essay 2011
Lengua madre (Mother Tongue) novel, 2010
La Mujer en Cuestión (The Woman in Question) novel, 2003
Lengua Madre (Mother tongue)
Novel
Mondadori Argentina, 2010. 231 pages
This novel was finalist of the International Novel Prize
Rómulo Gallegos 2011
Subjects such as complex filial relationships, the world of
women, the thoughts and feelings of the middle class, the
years of the Dicatorship, women writers, migrations, real
exile and interior exile, are focused upon from different
angles and through the points of view of three
generations in this novel, in which a young woman who
lives in voluntary exile in Munich and is a researcher on
Women’s Literature returns to a city in Patagonia,
Argentina, to close down her mother’s home after her
death. At her mother’s request she reads some letters left
by her. These letters were not written by her but by other
people who sent them to her and through which her
daughter will be able to reconstruct, in a kind of
backwards initiating journey, her mother’s and grandmother’s life as well as her own.
“The ethic and literary structure of María Teresa Andruetto derives from her ability to
weave discourses which are apparently not connected and provide them to the reader
in a dialogue as powerful for its findings as for the silence that floats around the reader
after each line”. Leopoldo Brizuela
“The most relevant and touching aspect in the subtle construction of Lengua madre are
the tenses and the nuances that circulate through the texts. The author unites
fragments with the craftsmanship of the poet and narrative dexterity in order to build a
story that plunges into the irretrievability of what never took place”. Diario Clarín
“(…) what a writing! Smoothness and vibration, passion and lucidity, love for tradition
and resistance”. Leopoldo Brizuela
Published by: Spanish worldwide Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
La mujer en cuestión (The woman in question)
Short
novel
Alción editora, Argentina, 2003. Mondadori, Argentina,
2009. 189 pages
National Fund for the Arts First Prize award 2002.
With a skewed detective story format, the novel revolves
around an enigmatic woman that stands out in the midst
of the social background during the years of the
Argentinean Dictatorship. Thus, Eva Mondino, the woman
in question, becomes (like Leni, in Heinrich Böll’s “Portrait
of Group with Lady”) an emblematic figure, or a pretext
perhaps, that unveils a period of time.
The main character of this novel, Eva Mondino, was
persecuted by State Terrorism during the last
Argentinean Military Dictatorship. Certain facts about her
life become ambiguous once she survives confinement. Her words and her searches
seem to be tinged with unreality, and the ghost of treason haunts her.
Considered by the prestigious Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung “as one
of the best novels ever written about the Argentinian dictatorship”.
“If evidence should be requested to demonstrate that María Teresa Andruetto is to be
regarded amongst the best writers of this rich, generous and unfortunate country, that
evidence is entitled La Mujer en Cuestión (The Woman in Question)”. Andrés Rivera.
“I really liked it very much. To besiege a mystery; to play with what is known, what is
unknown, with what is hidden, with what can be guessed… I thought it was an
impeccable way to approach this subject”. Martín Kohan.
Published by: Spanish worldwide Random House Mondadori/ Germany
Rotpunktverlag . For other countries available
Aurora Venturini
Argentina, 1922
She graduated in Philosophy and Education Sciences from
the National University of La Plata. She worked as advisor in
the Institute of Psychology and Re-education of Minors,
where she met Eva Perón, with whom she collaborated and
developed a very close friendship. In 1948 she was awarded
the Premio Iniciación (Initiation Prize) by Luis Borges in
person for her book El solitario (The Solitaire). She studied
Psychology at the University of Paris, city where she chose
to live as an exile for 25 years after the Revolución
Libertadora established by the Peronist Régime. In Paris
she lived with Violette Leduc and became friends with JeanPaul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Eugene
Ionesco and Juliette Gréco. In Sicily she made the acquaintance of Salvatore
Quasimodo, whom she also frequented.
She has translated and written analytical works on poets such as Isidore Ducasse,
Count of Lautréamont, Francoise Villon and Arthur Rimbaud; translations for which the
French Government rewarded her with the Iron Cross Medal.
“Aurora Venturini lacks silly sanity”. Vicente Aleixandre
“Aurora Venturini, the most extraordinary discovery in Argentinian literature in the latest
years”. Periodista digital
Works
Las primas (The Cousins) Novel, 2007
Bruna Maura-Maura Bruna, 2006
John W. Cooke ,2005
Racconto. Poesía, 2004
Alma y Sebastián. Cuentos, 2001
Venid amada alma, 2001
Lieder,1999
Me moriré en París, con aguacero. Novela,1998
Hadas, brujas y señoritas. Cuentos,1997
45 poemas paleoperonistas,1997
Evita, mester de amor (1997), en colaboración con Fermín Chávez.
Poesía gauchipolítica federal,1994
Nosotros, los Caserta. (We, the Caserta) Novel, 1992
Las Marías de Los Toldos. Novela,1991
Zingarella. Cuentos, 1988
Antologia personal, 1940-1976. Poesía, 1981
Jovita la osa. Cuentos, 1974
La Plata mon amour. Novela, 1974
Las primas (The Cousins)
Novel. Caballo de Troya, Random House Mondadori,
2008. 192 pages
Nueva Novela Prize 2007 held by Página 12.
Award Otras voces, otros Ámbitos, 2010
A novel relating the story of an initiation set in a
confusing atmosphere during the forties in the city of
La Plata, it unfolds the tortuous world of an obscure,
non functional middle class family. Subjects such as
suburb mythologies, the concept of family, female
sexuality and social promotion through the practice of
the fine arts are put on stage and scrutinized by the
unmistakable voice of the narrator: Yuna, who stares
wildly at the world she has to live in; a voice that can
be candid and brutal, sharp and pensive at the same
time, and which is written in a prose that defies and endangers all conventions on the
use of language in literature. In the crossroads between a delirious autobiography and
the rather shameless exercise of intimate ethnography, The Cousins is a unique novel,
a piece of literature taken to the extreme, genuinely disconcerting. It corners the reader
by calling into question all those things that books usually ignore or hide carefully, in
silence.
“Unique, extreme novel, disconcertingly original…” Jury of the Prize New Novel
awarded by Página 12, composed by Juan Ignacio Boldo, Juan Forn, Rodrigo
Fresán, Alan Pauls, Sandra Russo, Guillermo Saccomanno y Juan Sasturain.
“Half way between a delirious autobiography and a shameless exercise of initimate
ethnography, Las primas is a unique, extreme novel, of an incredible originality”. Alan
Pauls
“A novel written with morbid genius”. Enrique Vila Matas, El País
“Ferocious, full of sarcasm (…) with a torrential style, foreign to
conventions…” Magazine Qué leer
“Brave, unheard of and memorable novel…” El periódico de Cataluña.
Published by: Spanish worldwide Random House Mondadori/ France Robert Laffont/
Italy Salani.
Nosotros, los Caserta (We, the Caserta)
Novel
Ediciones El corregidor, 1992, 215 pages
Random House Mondadori Argentina, 2011
Caballo de Troya, Spain, 2011
Prize Domani, Verona, 1969
Prize Pirandello d’oro Della Collegiatura di Sicilia,
1969
The man who could have been but hers was not has
just passed away in a hospital in the arms of his
legitimate wife. The image of this farewell in which the
main character only participates as an intruder drives
her to a trunk full of memories, photographs, objects
and scenes of times long gone, which were not better.
The memories of her childhood and her early
adolescence, the travels to Europe might help her to give meaning to a whole life
based on the hope of a love that has been evading her until death. The deluge of
situations lived and remembered hat forms this novel has been untied by barely an
impulse, an image.
We, the Caserta is exactly that, the candid, pretentious and useless effort to give
meaning to a life through the ancestry, the genealogic tree and the more persistent
memories.
Like all the novels by Aurora Venturini, We, the Caserta takes place in La Plata and
also, like the rest of her work, the ghost of abnormality, the severity and the
misunderstandings of the elders give a strange meaning to all the everyday actions.
“Nosotros, los Caserta is a brilliant, provoking, ambitious and deliberately,
anachronistic novel”.Clarín, Ñ.
“In Venturini’s writing there is a power that brands those who dare to read her. She
gets into literature to leave a wound”. Página 12
“A wild intelligence”. La Nación
“Lucidity is priceless”. ABC
Published by: Spanish Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
Giovanna Rivero
Bolivia 1972
Has published the following books of
short stories: Contraluna (2005),
Sangre dulce (2006), La dueña de
nuestros sueños (children’s stories)
(2002, 2010), and Niñas y detectives
(2009). She has also published the
novels Las Camaleonas (2001, 2006,
2009)
and
Tukzon,
historias
colaterales (2008, 2010). Many of her
stories have been translated into
English, German, French, Hungarian, and Farsi. Her work has been compiled in
anthologies such as El futuro no es nuestro (Eterna Cadencia 2009),Voces de las dos
orillas (Universidad de Playa Ancha 2001), The Fat Man From La Paz (Seven Press,
Nueva York 2000), Pequeñas Resistencias Vol. II (Madrid 2005), and Ships of Flame
(Anthology compiled by Michi Strausfeld, Germany 2010).
In 2004 she participated in the prestigious International Writing Program at the
University of Iowa in the Unites States. She also took part in the Festival de la Palabra
in Alcalá de Henares in 2009 and in Fét a América in Barcelona in 2010.
Her essay, “El crimen Kistch,” has been included in Tradition et Modernité dans
l’oeuvre d’Edmundo Paz Soldán, under the direction of Erich Fisbach and published in
2010 in France by Presses Universitaries d´Angers.
She has received the Literary Prize of Santa Cruz de la Sierra (1996) and the National
Short Story Prize Franz Tamayo (2005).
In 2006 she received a Fulbright-LASPAU scholarship. Currently, she is getting her
PhD in Spanish American Literature at the University of Florida in the United States.
Guadalajara Book Fair (edition 2011) selected her as one of the writers who
guarantees the continuation ofthe great Latinamerican writers of the XXth
century.
Works
Niñas y detectives. Short Stories, 2009
Las Camaleonas. Novel, 2001, 2006, 2009
Tukzon, historias colaterales .Novel, 2008
Contraluna. Short Stories, 2005
Sangre dulce. Short Stories, 2006
La dueña de nuestros sueños. Short Stories, 2002, 2010
Niñas y detectives
Short Stories
Bartleby Editores. 2009. 128 pages.
“Tension is never fully contained in her narrative.
Violence explodes and trouble is everywhere. Like the
scorpions in one of her stories, men and women are
always on the attack and to sense the danger one
must be alert. What for others may be the tranquil
page, here there is real blood, and it’s never
gratuitous. My commentary falls short if I say that with
Niñas y detectives, Giovanna Rivero bursts with force
into the contemporary Latin American literary pantheon
published in Spain.
This book is, simultaneously, a storm of imagery,
fascinating plots, and a celebration of language. Be
advised.” Edmundo Paz Soldán.
“Giovanna Rivero’s stories pound the reader’s mind. Whether it be the subject or the
form of the narrative, Giovanna doesn’t want anybody to be indifferent to her literary
wagers (…).
“(…) Giovanna Rivero’s boldness with subject matter and attitudes that could be
considered taboo is another direct blow to the reader’s jaw. In stories such as
Honorarios, not only does one find commotion but a knockout”. Esteban Gutierrez
Gómez, Revista de Letras.
“(…) Niñas y detectives goes beyond its own spatial, temporal, and any other
circumstances. Niñas y detectives is literature”.
“(…) Her pen moves with a firmness that almost gets stuck in your side and you can
smell your own blood (…)”. Celia Gutiérrez Vázquez
Published by: Spanish Bartleby Editores.
For other countries available
Las camaleonas
Novel
Editorial La Hoguera. 2001 y 2009
A model, a detective, a sadistic psychiatrist, and a
forbidden intimate diary constitute the cardinal
points with which a woman in her thirties will draw
the map of her affective future.
Las Camaleonas is a novel that sees the feminine
soul through to the bitter end converting clichés
into unknown territories. What was considered in
principle as an “erotic” novel has demonstrated,
already in its third edition, that the pulp has more
flesh and complexity than the skin that deceivingly
conceals it. This is, in short, an unpredictable
novel.
Published by: Spanish Editorial La Hoguera.
For other countries available
Tukzon
Hybrid Novel
Editorial La Hoguera, 2008, 2010. 186 pages
The second edition (2010) was reissued with one of
its stories made into a comic strip under the
direction of illustrator Billy Castillo.
The plot centers on an organ trafficking operation in
Arizona, USA, whose victims are illegal immigrants.
The Bolivian magazine Mother Fucker has sent a
writer/crime reporter to write a dangerous story on
organ traffickers that work out of Arizona and whose
victims are illegal immigrants. Her contact in the
“exterior” is the mysterious Ariadna Nemesis, who
will guide her to the Arizona deserts. There, a
terrible conspiracy that is taking place (in which
even Hollywood is a participant) is intent on maintaining the president of the United
States alive: His body requires new organs.
A fierce novel; entertaining and wild.
“(…) Giovanna Rivero, with an enviable fluency that stems from her tight style, made of
a zenithal lucidity, is capable of illuminating the most hidden states of consciousness”.
Ramón Rocha Monroy
“(…) Tukzon is a hybrid novel or a collection of 14 related stories linked by a singular,
innovative, and daring concept that unites them in an allusive and fragmentary
fashion”. Ronald Flores
“Rivero’s style is of a fluid biting rhythm, mixing descriptions and philosophical
observations with admirable ease”. Ronald Flores
Published by: spanish Editorial La Hoguera.
For other countries available
Marcelo Luján
Argentina, 1973
Marcelo Luján is a journalist and a
writer. He coordinates workshops on
Creative Writing in Madrid, where he
has been living since 2001.
He has published Flores para Irene or
(Flowers for Irene) (short stories,
Santa Cruz de Tenerife Prize 2004),
En algún cielo or (In some sky) (short
stories, Ciudad de Alcalá de Narrativa
Prize), La mala espera (The wrong
await) Prize Ciudad de Getafe for
Black Novel, 2009;Arder en invierno ( Burning in winter) Short stories, 2010 and a
dozen short stories in different anthologies.
Part of his work has been selected in campaigns to foster reading.
He was second to the Clarín Prize 2005, whose jury was composed by José
Saramago, Rosa Montero and Eduardo Belgrano Rawson.
“Marcelo Luján possesses a rich and direct language, his narrative pulse is firm and his
characters and environments always surprise us”. Óscar Urra
Works
Moravia, novel, 2012
Arder en el invierno ( Burning in the winter) Short stories, 2010
La mala espera (The wrong await) novel, 2009
El desvío (The Detour) Short story,2007
En algún cielo (In some sky), Short stories, 2007
Flores para Irene (Flowers for Irene), Short stories, 2004
Moravia
Novel. El Apleph, 2012, 170 pages
Buenos Aires, 1950. Juan Kosic, now an established
orchestra bandoneon player, returns to his birthplace
fifteen years after leaving it, accompanied by his wife and
little daughter. He turns up at the boarding house his
mother has been running for over forty years in Colonia
Buen Respiro, a God-forsaken village lost in the vastness
of the Argentine pampa, but without revealing his identity.
Juan Kosic wants to show his mother that he has
succeeded financially thanks to the profession that she
denied him and that brought about their separation. But the
story takes an irreversible turn when their meeting
generates a catastrophic misunderstanding.
In this novella, based on a short news ítem appearing in
Camus’s The Stranger, the author gives us his reflection
on the danger of playing with appearances and human
beings’ capacity for destruction. As in the Greek tragedies, hubris and ambition
determine the fate of the characters and lead them toward a dramatic ending.
Moravia creates a perfect mood of foreboding on the long road home again.
"The story has powerful foundations and is well solved." Ernesto Calabuig, El Cultural
.
"With this bokk, Marcelo Luján defines himself as one of the most lucid writers of his
generation.” Ana María Shua
“I daresay we are in front of one of the great novels of this year." Lorenzo Silva, El
Mundo
. "A wild work as far as emotions are concerned, careful in the form and intense in its
content." Marian Chaparro, Koult
."One has to be grateful to the bleakness and the precision of the language: nothing is
missing or out of place." Raúl Argemí, Sigueleyendo
."Luján's prose is something one would love to imitate, without knowing how to." Javier
Márquez, Esquire
.
"This is one of these texts that moves something inside you, that surprises and touches
you." El placer de la lectura.
Published by: Spanish El Aleph.
For other countries available
La mala espera (The wrong await)
Novel. EDAF, 2009, 227 pages
Prize Ciudad de Getafe for Black Novel , 2009
An Argentinian immigrant known as El Nene has
spent several years in Madrid, surviving on the jobs
he receives from a clandestine drug trafficking
“agency”- Nene’s life takes a sudden turn when he
accepts a proposal to “keep the change” from one of
his riskiest drug deals, involving the transportation of
pure cocaine inside the bodies of Central American
children. The missing kilos of cocaine soon lead Nene
into his worst nightmare. Nene decides to try his luck
at exposing the heads of the agency, but what he
doesn’t realize is that everyone around him is part of
a complex scheme of false identities, death, survival,
betrayal and thirty three years of waiting to take
revenge for past wrongs.
The wrong await is not a story of revenge itself, but
rather it is a portrait of all the consuming power of waiting to take revenge on your
enemies.
“With this novel, Luján acquires a place of a singular value in the Spanish
contemporary narrative”. Lorenzo Slva
“With The wrong await, Luján gets what is most difficult for a novelist: that the reader
identifies with the character to the point of feeling every punch, every doubt, every fear
that happens to the protagonist. And that hurts. And creates addiction”. Carlos Salem
“Marcelo Luján possesses a rich and direct language and his environments and
characters are surprising”. Óscar Urra.
Published by: Spanish worldwide EDAF/France Moisson Rouge
For other countries available
Osvaldo Aguirre
Argentina, 1964
Studied Literature at the National University of
Rosario. Between 1993 and 2004 he worked as a
crime reporter for La Capital newspaper in Rosario,
where he is currently the editor of Sunday supplement
Señales de la cultura y la sociedad.
He is also a coeditor of the site Bazar Americano and
deputy editor of the arts magazine 32 Pies. He is a
member of the organizing team of the Rosario
International Poetry Festival and of the editorial board
of the newspaper Diario de Poesía.
Works
La deriva. (The Drif ) Novel. Beatriz Viterbo, 1996, 2012
El año del dragón. Stories. Recovecos, 2011
El novato. Novel. Aquilina, 2011
Todos mienten. Novel. Negro Absoluto, 2009
Los Indeseables. Novel. Negro Absoluto, 2008
La conexión latina. Essay. Tusquets, 2008
Graffiti ninja (collaborative effort). Novel. Norma , 2007
La noche del gato de angora. Stories. Editorial Fundación Ross, 2006
Notas en un diario. Non-fiction stories. Editorial Municipal de Rosario, 2006
Rocanrol. Stories. Beatriz Viterbo, 2006
La Chicago Argentina: crimen, mafia y prostitución en Rosario. Essay. Editorial
Fundación Ross, 2006
La pandilla salvaje. Butch Cassidy en la Patagonia (The Wıld Bunch: Butch Cassidy in
Patagonia). Essay. Norma, 2004
Enemigos públicos. Essay. Norma, 2003
Historias de la mafia en la Argentina. Norma, 2000, 2010
Estrella del norte. Novel. Sudamericana, 1998
Los pasos de la memoria. Chronicles. América Libre, 1996
La deriva (The Drif)
Novel
Beatriz Viterbo, 1996. El Aleph editores, 2012. 228
pages.
For the journalist who is the protagonist of the story, the
city is a space that offers no opportunity for movement, a
prison.
The ambiguity of his life, which swings back and forth
between the law (which uses his own profession as just
another tool) and that which is absolutely prohibited,
between the lies of the mighty and the truth of the
marginalized, reaches an extreme. This is when all the
masks come off and he has to look at the face of the
person beside him, what the tines of the fork take hold of
and pick up. Immersed in absolute disorientation, the
character frees himself of both friends and enemies and
traces out an unprecedented path over the topography of
a city the reality of which had remained unknown to the documentary, lyrical, fantastic
versions that had come before. This is the Argentine crime novel that was yet to be
written.
“…the bluntness of expression in The Drif reaches a level that goes beyond the
commonplace”. Elvio Gandolfo, La Capital
Published by: Spain El Aleph Editores.
For other countries available
Graffiti Ninja
Co-authors Osvaldo Aguirre and Eduardo González.
Detective story for young readers. Norma, 2007. 166
pages
If there is a dead body, there are news". Luis is an
inexpert journalist working in the crime section of a
newspaper. He knows this very well since his boss,
Yuyo, keeps repeating it.
And that night there was a piece of news, hanging
from a tree, with a scarab tattoed on the chest and a
fresh graffiti on the wall behind, signed by a certain
"Ninja". This would be the first of an awsome series.
The Baby took the pictures for the front page of
the tabloid and detective Sosa moved around with the
professionality of somebody used to see blod and corpses. For Luis, everrything was
new and, at the same time, familiar.
This is the beginning of a detective story full of thrill and mistery. Dead bodies,
intriguing graffiti, a beautiful woman called Hégira and a couple of twin criminals are the
elements with which our journalist and writer will step into a world full of squalor and
poetry.
Published by: Argentine Editorial Norma
Luis Velasco Blake
Argentina, 1956
Kidnapped by the Argentine military dictatorship,
he managed to escape to Peru and then went
into exile in Spain, where he has lived for more
than thirty years.
He has participated in various writing
workshops. Una Historia sencilla is his first novel.
Works
Una historia sencilla (A Sımple Story)
Una historia sencilla (A simple story)
Novel
Caballo de Troya, 2011. 138 pages
A Sımple Story tells the story of a middle-class Argentine
family against the backdrop of the clash between
Peronism and anti-Peronism.
Narrated by Matïas, the youngest child, the novel traces
with seeming ease, various plot lines against the canvas
of a turbulent country: that of Julián, a pleasant,
attractive, ever adolescent father; that of Nelly, the
mother, the daughter of Calvinist immigrants of British
roots, the rabidly anti-Peronist, faithful, self-sacrificing
wife; that of Jorge, eight years older than Matías, who in
the late 70’s enters the university to study philosophy at
which point his political consciousness awakens, which
leads him to become active in Peronist youth
organizations and in the Montoneros; and that of Julia,
five years older than Matías, possessed of a strong, independent character, which
studies economics, wants to do away with capitalism and is an active Trotskyite.
The fates of these characters allow the author to discuss the dilemmas facing a
generation of Argentinians.
Growing up, Matías observes a reality that comes crashing down on him as he goes
through the rites of initiation faced by any adolescent. Years later he remembers those
times. “Sobbing she told me “your father died this morning” and a dark emptiness came
over me. Then I understand that it is when your parents start to die that we really start
to be left alone.”
The narrative starts in 1943 and covers Peron’s first government, dictatorship,
repression and the tragedy of the disappeared.
Constantino Bertolo, the publisher, points out on the book jacket that the Spanish have
always been incapable of understanding Peronism, but that this novel will bring about a
change.
“The title of this magnificent novel contains a productiıve irony: making one of the
planet’s most complex contemporary national histories simple”. Babelia, El País
“There is a lack of texts like this, even though people have been writing a great deal
about the subject for quite a while now”. Laura Alcoba
“There is in Luis Velasco’s novel a Pedro Páramo deconstructed, which along with
historical time that advances with the clock, weaves the simultaneity of memories”.
Clara Obligado
Published by: Spanish worldwide Caballo de Troya, Random House Mondadori.
For other countries available
Patricio Sturlese
Argentina, 1973
Patricio Sturlese studied theology with the
Jesuit Fathers at the Colegio Máximo, San
Miguel (Argentina). He has devoted himself to
research on the history of the Church, the
Inquisition and the heresies during the
Renaissance. He has also travelled in the main
places where this history takes place: medieval
castles and European monasteries.
His former novels (El Inquisidor and La sexta
Vía) are still bestsellers in Spain and Latin
America, and they have been translated into
different languages and publlished in thirty
countries.
.
“A worthy descendant of Alexander Dumas”. Página12, Argentina
www.sturlese.net
Works
El umbral del bosque. (The threshold of the forest) Novel, 2012
La Sexta Vía. (The Sixth Way) Novel. 2009
El Inquisidor. (The Inquisitor) Novel. 2007
El umbral del bosque (The threshold of the forest)
Novel . Suma de Letras, 2012. 496 pages
The threshold of the forest is a Gothic novel. It
takes place in the 18th Century, primarily in the
Nordic countries. The main plot line focuses on
myths about drävulia (Scandinavian vampires) and
on a curse known as the “night of 400 years” which
put an end to the Kingdom of Norway and its royal
line.
1604, the Castle of Countess Báthory, Kingdom of
Hungary.
The novel’s leading character, Captain Pier Ugo
Mameli, Venetian merchant, is hired by Countess
Báthory to search for a chest to be found in the
Gobi Desert of Mongolia and containing papers
crucial for her kingdom. Mameli is to then transport
it to the castle in secret.
As he is about to begin his journey, the Captain starts to have nightmares which bring
back memories of incidents from his youth, nightmares which continue as he travels
toward the Gobi. At the same time he begins to observe seemingly inexplicable events:
banks of fog which suddenly come up at night, unidentifiable knocks on his door, the
mysterious appearance of maple leaves…
The tension builds as Mameli arrives in Mongolia and succeeds in gaining possession
of the chest. He sets out on the trip back to the castle in Hungary but halfway there he
allows some seemingly defenseless young women on board his ship.
The ladies, members of the Nordic aristocracy start to take on more important roles on
the ship and change the ship’s destination.
Beguiled by them, and particularly by Abigail von Karstein, the Captain is overcome by
fear and confusion: Abigail is identical to the woman in his nightmares.
She visits him in his cabin at night. Unable to resist seduction, Mameli cannot see no
boundary between what he dreams and what happens. Abigail and her companions
are playing with his mind.
On board there is a series of murders which leave the victims’ bodies with strange
wounds on their arms and legs. The Captain soon discovers that the beautiful women
are not who they claim to be, but are in reality drävulias, Scandinavian vampires.
Impelled by the bloody murders taking place on his ship, Mameli decides to examine
the chest he was bringing back for the Báthorys. Inside it he discovers a map which
marks the hiding place of a book known as The Threshold of the Forest, written in the
13th Century by a Norwegian monarch. The book appears to be the cause of a secret
dispute and also of a curse which attracts the drävulias, who covet it desperately.
Under siege on his own vessel, Mameli is forced by the drävulias to change course
toward Norway so they can make off with the chest they want so much.
Indeed they do manage to carry it off but this sets off a chase which takes the story to
the frozen lands of Scandinavia. The Captain must get back the chest, and following a
trail that takes him through the towns and ancient cemeteries of Norway and Sweden
and finally arrives at the very heart of the mystery: the discovery of The Threshold of
the Forest.
The presence of Mameli and his men in the land of the drävulias causes confrontations
among the vampires themselves who in their villages and hiding places suffer violent
ambushes and ferocious attacks.
The Captain is in danger of losing not only the chest but his life, and his relationship
with Abigail leaves him torn between desire and duty.
The threshold of the forest becomes a temptation for Mameli himself, who abandons
his assignment and loyalty to his client and puts all his efforts into the mystery of its
content.
A bloodbath brings the story to an end and the final climax is one of forbidden love
marked by death.
Published by: Spanish Suma de Letras
For other countries available
El Inquisidor (The Inquisitor)
Novel. Random House Mondadori, DeBolsilo,
Spain 2007. 550 pages
A furiously paced thriller set in the tumultuous late
16th century. An inquisitor is searching for the
Necronomicon, a satanic book that could shake the
very foundations of the Church.
An historic thriller with all the ingredients to be a
huge hit: the sinister world of the Inquisition and
witchcraft; a satanic book capable of bringing about
the destruction of the world; an almost forbidden
love; and a surprise ending.
In 1597, in the chambers of Pope Clement VIII at the
Vatican, Angelo DeGrasso, Inquisitor General of
Liguria, is received in private audience by the Pope,
the Inquisitor General and a strange astrologer
named Darko. They have just told him that a heretic named Eros Gianmaria, who has
been brought from Venice, holds a terrible secret: he is the only person who knows the
whereabouts of the last copy of a forbidden book, the Necronomicon and Angelo must
use his skills to get a confession out of him. But there isn’t much time, since he must
set out for the New World in a few days, on a mission that will not be revealed to him
until he has already embarked.
Over the course of his adventure, Angelo will discover a plot of interwoven
conspiracies. On one side, there is the Great Wizard’s sect that aspires to destroy
Christianity, and which has held onto the book for that reason; on the other side, the
Masons of Corpus Caria, a sect that is trying to recover the forbidden book and hide it
from the Holy Inquisition; and on yet another side, those inside the Vatican itself, who
are conspiring against Angelo because they consider him a potential heretic.
As he descends the stairs of Saint Peter’s basilica one cold autumn day, Angelo has a
feeling that his life is going to change drastically. The unforgiving Inquisitor General of
Genoa will not take long to discover that not even he is what he seems…
An enthralling novel that takes us to the turbulent end of the 16th century, in which the
Catholic Church kills to defend the orthodoxy and maintain its power, in which covens
of witches live in the Italian forests under the protection of Satan and the Moon, and in
which everyone is willing to die for their faith — but which faith?
Published by: Spanish worldwide Randon House Mondadori/ Germany Hayne/ Italy
Sperling/ Poland Albatros/ Russia Ripol/ Romania Rao/ Denmark Jentas.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION AVAILABLE
La sexta vía (The Sixth Way)
Novel. Random House Mondadori, DeBolsilo, Spain 2009.
517 pages
Santo Domingo Convent, Antigua, Guatemala; December
27th, 1598. After suffering terrible torture and before dying at
the stake, Dariuz Hässler, the heretic, has not only
confessed his horrendous crimes, amongst others the
murder of five newborn babies, but has also revealed the
existence of a relic containing a mysterious map that
indicates where to find a document which has been hidden
for four centuries. Written by learned, catholic hands, this
threatening document could crack down to pieces the
foundations of all existing and future religions.
The Catholic Church fears the extinction of faith to the detriment of reason. The
worshippers of Satan regard this as an excellent opportunity to finish off Christianity.
And the members of the Corpus Carpus Society must keep the relic/secret hidden at all
costs.
A fight without truces takes place where sex, black magic, treason and a reckless
ambition for power are key pieces on the chessboard across which good and evil
engage in their battle. A battle in which the borders between both armies/parties have
never been so diffuse, and where faith is a dangerous double-edged weapon. A battle
that can decide the future of humanity.
Published by: Spanish worldwide Randon House Mondadori/ Denmark Jentas