Современная зарубежная литература
Различные книги в жанре Современная зарубежная литератураWhy I Killed My Best Friend
"Flawlessly translated, Amanda Michalopolou's WIKMBF uses the backdrop of Greek politics, radical protests, and the art world to explore the dangers and joys that come with BFFs. Or, as the narrator puts it, 'odiodsamato,' which translates roughly as 'frienemies.'"—Gary Shteyngart In Amanda Michalopoulou's Why I Killed My Best Friend , a young girl named Maria is lifted from her beloved Africa and relocated to her native Greece. She struggles with the transition, hating everything about Athens: the food, the air, the school, her classmates, the language. Just as she resigns herself to misery, Anna arrives. Though Anna's refined, Parisian upbringing is the exact opposite of Maria's, the two girls instantly bond over their common foreignness, becoming inseparable in their relationship as each other's best friend, but also as each other's fiercest competition—be it in relation to boys, talents, future aspirations, or political beliefs. From Maria and Anna's grade school days in '70s, post-dictatorship Greece, to their adult lives in the present, Michalopoulou charts the ups, downs, and fallings-out of the powerful self-destructive bond only true best friends can have. Simply and beautifully written, Why I Killed My Best Friend is a novel that ultimately compares and explores friendship as a political system of totalitarianism and democracy. Amanda Michalopoulou[/b] is the author of five novels, two short story collections, and a successful series of children's books. One of Greece's leading contemporary writers, Michalopoulou has won that country's highest literary awards, including the Revmata Prize and the Diavazo Award. Her story collection, I'd Like, was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award. Karen Emmerich[/b] is a translator of Modern Greek poetry and prose. Her recent translations include volumes by Yannis Ritsos, Margarita Karapanou, Ersi Sotiropoulos, and Miltos Sachtouris. She has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and is on the faculty of the University of Oregon.
Pets
"Dark, scary, and unbelievably funny."—Los Angeles Times[/i] "The best short novel I've read this year. . . .Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces."—Barnes & Noble Review[/i] Back in Reykjavik after a vacation in London, Emil Halldorsson is waiting for a call from a beautiful girl, Greta, that he met on the plane ride home, and he's just put on a pot of coffee when an unexpected visitor knocks on the door. Peeking through a window, Emil spies an erstwhile friend—Havard Knutsson, his one-time roommate and current resident of a Swedish mental institution—on his doorstep, and he panics, taking refuge under his bed and hoping the frightful nuisance will simply go away. Havard won't be so easily put off, however, and he breaks into Emil's apartment and decides to wait for his return—Emil couldn't have gone far; the pot of coffee is still warming on the stove. While Emil hides under his bed, increasingly unable to show himself with each passing moment, Havard discovers the booze, and he ends up hosting a bizarre party for Emil's friends, and Greta. An alternately dark and hilarious story of cowardice, comeuppance, and assumed identity, the breezy and straightforward style of The Pets belies its narrative depth, and disguises a complexity that grows with every page. Bragi Ólafsson[/b] is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Time Off[/i], which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1999 (as was The Pets[/i]), and Party Games[/i], for which Bragi received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. The Ambassador[/i], available from Open Letter, was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller's Award as best novel of the year. Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster's City of Glass[/i] into Icelandic. He is also a former bass player with The Sugarcubes, the internationally successful pop group that featured Bjürk as the lead vocalist. Janice Balfour[/b] studied literature and Italian at the University of Iceland. In addition to Bragi Ólafsson, she has translated two collections of short stories by Gydir Elíasson.
Navidad & Matanza
"Carlos Labbé's [ Navidad & Matanza ] begins to fuck with your head from its very first word—moving through journalese, financial reporting, whodunit, Joseph Conrad, Raymond Chandler, Nabokov to David Lynch."—Toby Litt It's the summer of 1999 when the two children of wealthy video game executive Jose Francisco Vivar, Alicia and Bruno, go missing in the beach town of Matanza. Long after their disappearance, the people of Matanza and the adjacent town of Navidad consistently report sightings of Bruno—on the beach, in bars, gambling—while reports on Alicia, however, are next to none. And every clue keeps circling back to a man named Boris Real . . . At least that's how the story—or one of many stories, rather—goes. All of them are told by a journalist narrator, who recounts the mysterious case of the Vivar family from an underground laboratory where he and six other «subjects» have taken up a novel-game, writing and exchanging chapters over email, all while waiting for the fear-inducing drug hadón to take its effect, and their uncertain fates. A literary descendant of Roberto Bolaño and Andrés Neuman, Carlos Labbé's Navidad & Matanza is a work of metafiction that not only challenges our perceptions of facts and observations, and of identity and reality, but also of basic human trust. Carlos Labbé[/b], one of Granta's «Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists,» was born in Chile and is the author of six novels, including Navidad & Matanza and Locuela , and a collection of short stories. In addition to his writings he is a musician, and has released three albums. He is a co-editor at Sangria, a publishing house based in Santiago and Brooklyn, where he translates and runs workshops. He also writes literary essays, the most notable ones on Juan Carlos Onetti, Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolaño—three writers whose influence can be seen in Navidad & Matanza. Will Vanderhyden[/b] received an MA in Literary Translation from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labbé, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Marsé, Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, and Elvio Gandolfo.
Death in Spring
Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Mercè Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless town—burying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a flood—through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society. The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. Written over a period of twenty years—after Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil War— Death in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers. Mercè Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring . Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.
Gasoline
"Monzó delivers drollery on nearly every page, in observations that are incisive and hilarious and horrifying, often all at once."—Publishers Weekly[/i] For the first time in his life, Heribert Juliá is unable to paint. On the eve of an important gallery exhibition, for which he's created nothing, he's bored with life: he falls asleep while making love with his mistress, wanders from bar to bar, drinking whatever comes to his attention first, and meets the evidence of his wife Helena's infidelity with complete indifference. Humbert Herrera, an up-and-coming artist who can't stop creating, picks up the threads of Heribert's life, taking his wife, replacing him at the gallery, and pursuing his former mistress. Heribert is finally undone by a massive sculpture, while Humbert is planning the sculpture to end sculpture, the poem to end poetry, and the film to end film, all while mounting three simultaneous shows. A fun-house mirror through which he examines the creative process, the life and loves of artists, and the New York art scene, Gasoline confirms Quim Monzó as the foremost Catalan writer of his generation. Quim Monzó[/b] was born in Barcelona in 1952. He has been awarded the National Award, the City of Barcelona Award, the Prudenci Bertrana Award, the El Temps Award, the Lletra d'Or Prize for the best book of the year, and the Catalan Writers' Award; he has been awarded Serra d'Or magazine's prestigious Critics' Award four times. He has also translated numerous authors into Catalan, including Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, and Ernest Hemingway. Mary Ann Newman is the Director of the Catalan Center at New York University's Center for European and Mediterranean Studies. She is a translator, editor, and occasional writer on Catalan culture.
La Grande
"A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place."—The Nation[/i] Saer's final novel, La Grande, is the grand culmination of his life's work, bringing together themes and characters explored throughout his career, yet presenting them in a way that is beautifully unique, and a wonderful entry-point to his literary world. Moving between past and present, La Grande centers around two related stories: that of Gutiérrez, his sudden departure from Argentina 30 years before, and his equally mysterious return; and that of «precisionism,» a literary movement founded by a rather dangerous fraud. Dozens of characters populate these storylines, including Nula, the wine salesman, ladies' man, and part-time philosopher; Lucía, the woman he's lusted after for years; and Tomatis, a journalist whom Saer fans have encountered many times before. Written in Saer's trademark style, this lyrically gorgeous book—which touches on politics, artistic beliefs, illicit love affairs, and everything else that makes up life—ends with one of the greatest lines in all of literature: «With the rain came the fall, and with the fall, the time of the wine.» Juan José Saer[/b] (1937–2005), born in Santa Fé, Argentina, was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. In 1968, he moved to Paris and taught literature at the University of Rennes. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Sixty-Five Years of Washington, Scars, The One Before, The Clouds, all being published by Open Letter), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Steve Dolph[/b] is the founding editor of Calque, a journal of literature in translation. His translation of Saer's Scars was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award. He lives in Philadelphia where he spends his summers rooting for the Phillies.
My First Suicide
"Pilch's antic sensibility confirms that he is the compatriot of Witold Gombrowicz, the Polish maestro of absurdist pranks. But readers with a taste for the fermented Irish blarney of Flann O’Brien, Samuel Beckett, and John Kennedy Toole might also savor Pilch."—Barnes & Noble Review[/i]Neither strictly a collection of stories nor a novel, the ten pieces that comprise My First Suicide straddles the line between intimate revelation and drunken confession. These stories reveal a nostalgic and poetic Pilch, one who can pen a character's lyrical ode to the fate of his father's perfect chess table in one story, examine a teacher's desperate and dangerous infatuation with a student in the next, and then, always true to his obsessions, tell a remarkably touching story that begins by describing his narrator's excitement at the possibility of a three-way with the seductive soccer-fan, Anka Chow Chow. The stories of My First Suicide[/i] combine irony and humor, anecdote and gossip, love and desire with an irresistibly readable style that is vintage Pilch. Jerzy Pilch[/b] is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel[/i]. His novels have been translated into numerous languages. David Frick[/b] is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Mighty Angel
"Pilch's prose is masterful, and the bulk of The Mighty Angel[/i] evokes the same numb, floating sensation as a bottle of Zloldkowa Gorzka."—L Magazine[/i] The Mighty Angel[/i] concerns the alcoholic misadventures of a writer named Jerzy. Eighteen times he's woken up in rehab. Eighteen times he's been released—a sober and, more or less, healthy man—after treatment at the hands of the stern therapist Moses Alias I Alcohol. And eighteen times he's stopped off at the liquor store on the way home, to pick up the supplies that are necessary to help him face his return to a ruined apartment. While he's in rehab, Jerzy collects the stories of his fellow alcoholics—Don Juan the Rib, The Most Wanted Terrorist in the World, the Sugar King, the Queen of Kent, the Hero of Socialist Labor—in an effort to tell the universal, and particular, story of the alcoholic, and to discover the motivations and drives that underlie the alcoholic's behavior. A simultaneously tragic, comic, and touching novel, The Mighty Angel displays Pilch's caustic humor, ferocious intelligence, and unparalleled mastery of storytelling. Jerzy Pilch[/b] is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel . His novels have been translated into numerous languages. Bill Johnston[/b] is Director of the Polish Studies Center at Indiana University and has translated works by Witold Gombrowicz, Magdalena Tulli, Wieslaw Mysliwski, and others. He won the Best Translated Book Award in 2012 and the inaugural Found in Translation Award in 2008.
Everything Happens as It Does
WINNER OF THE 2013 CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN WRITERS CONTEST[/b] Albena Stambolova's idiosyncratic debut novel, Everything Happens as It Does[/i], builds from the idea that, as the title suggests, everything happens exactly the way it must. In this case, the seven characters of the novel—from Boris, a young boy who is only at peace when he's around bees, to Philip and Maria and their twins—each play a specific role in the lives of the others, binding them all together into a strange, yet logical, knot. As characters are picked up, explored, and then swept aside, the novel's beguiling structure becomes apparent, forcing the reader to pay attention to the patterns created by this accumulation of events and relationships. This is not a novel of reaching moral high ground; this is not a book about resolving relationships; this is a story whose mysteries are mysteries for a reason. Written with a precise, succinct tone that calls to mind Camus's The Stranger[/i], Everything Happens as It Does[/i] is a captivating and detail-driven novel that explores how depth will never be as immediately accessible as superficiality, and how everything will run its course in the precise manner it was always meant to. Albena Stambolova[/b] is the author of three novels. She has also published a collection of short stories and a psychoanalytical study on Marguerite Duras. She currently lives in Bulgaria, where she works as a psychological and organizational consultant, and is working on a book about fairy tales. Olga Nikolova[/b] completed her PhD at Harvard University, with a dissertation on modern poetry, graphic design, and academic writing. She's been translating the works of Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein in to Bulgarian.
A Thousand Peaceful Cities
"If laughter actually is the best medicine, fortunate readers of this wonderful novel will surely enjoy perfect health for the rest of their days."—Kirkus Reviews[/i] A comic gem, Jerzy Pilch's A Thousand Peaceful Cities[/i] takes place in 1963, in the latter days of the Polish post-Stalinist «thaw.» The narrator, Jerzyk («little Jerzy»), is a teenager who is keenly interested in his father, a retired postal administrator, and his father's closest friend, Mr. Traba, a failed Lutheran clergyman, alcoholic, and would-be Polish insurrectionist. One drunken afternoon, Mr. Traba and the narrator's father decide to take charge of their lives and do one final good turn for humanity: travel to distant Warsaw and assassinate the de facto Polish head of state, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, Wladyslaw Gomulka—assassinating Mao Tse-tung, after all, would be impractical. And they decide to involve Jerzyk in their scheme… Jerzy Pilch[/b] is one of Poland's most important contemporary writers and journalists. In addition to his long-running satirical newspaper column, Pilch has published several novels, and has been nominated for Poland's prestigious NIKE Literary Award four times; he finally won the Award in 2001 for The Mighty Angel[/i]. His novels have been translated into numerous languages.David Frick[/b] is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of California, Berkeley.