A satirical look at the origins of power, A Zero-Sum Game uses the highly-charged election for the presidency of a residents' committee and the influence of a powerful stranger to both expose those in power and sympathize with the individuals who find themselves caught in the paradox of empowerment and impotence that is modern consumer society and the democratic state.
"A striking metaphor for our times."—[i]Le FigaroThis long-awaited English-language debut from Morocco's most prominent contemporary writer won the Prix Gouncourt de Nouvelles, France's most prestigious literary award, for best story collection. Laroui uses surrealism, laugh-out-loud humor, and profound compassion across a variety of literary styles to highlight the absurdity of the human condition, exploring the realities of life in a world where everything is foreign.[b]Fouad Laroui has published over twenty novels and collections of short stories, poetry, and essays. Laroui teaches econometrics and environmental science at the University of Amsterdam, and lives between Amsterdam, Paris, and Casablanca.
Won a French Voices Award from French Embassy for this translation Second novel in English by woman member of Oulipo (the first was Anne Garréta) Fans of classic Oulipo writers, who include Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, and Raymond Queneau, will be as enraptured as fans of recent novels told in eclectic, innovative, and experimental narrative styles and ideas.
"An ode to the imagination."—[i]NRC HandelsbladA joy to read, [i]La Superba, winner of the most prestigious Dutch literary prize, is a Rabelaisian, stylistic tour-de-force. Migration, legal and illegal, is at the center of this novel about a writer who becomes trapped in his walk on the wild side in mysterious and exotic Genoa, the labyrinthine port city nicknamed «La Superba.»[b]Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (b. 1968), poet, dramatist, novelist, renowned in the Netherlands as a master of language, is the only two-time winner of the Tzum Prize for «the most beautiful sentence written in Dutch» (including one in [i]La Superba!).
INTERNATIONAL ROMULO GALLEGOS NOVEL PRIZE 2011 (most prestigious prize given to a single novel in the Spanish language) NATIONAL CRITICS PRIZE 2011 (best novel of the year written in Spanish, awarded in Spain) THE BEST NOVEL IN SPANISH OF THE YEAR 2010 (chose by 55 critics & journalists of El País) Author taught at American universities for three decades, including at Princeton, and has deep connections to universities, bookstores, and with American writers First novel published in English in 12 years, huge anticipation among fans of Latin American literature and of his earlier works
"A wonderful exercise in humanism . . . [by] a prodigious and impressive storyteller".—[i]Jakarta GlobeAn epic saga of «families and friends entangled in the cruel snare of history» ([i]Time magazine), [i]Home combines political repression and exile with a spicy mixture of love, family, and food, alternating between Paris and Jakarta in the time between Suharto's 1965 rise to power and downfall in 1998, further illuminating Indonesia's tragic twentieth-century history popularized by the Oscar-nominated documentary [i]The Act of Killing.[b]Leila S. Chudori is Indonesia's most prominent female journalist. [i]Home is her debut novel and won Indonesia's most important literary prize in 2013.
Two friends, one a budding writer home from Europe, the other an ambitious racketeer, meet in the only nightclub, the Tram 83, in a war-torn city-state in secession, surrounded by profit-seekers of all languages and nationalities. [i]Tram 83 plunges the reader into the modern African gold rush as cynical as it is comic and colorfully exotic, using jazz rhythms to weave a tale of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. [b]Fiston Mwanza Mujila (b. 1981, Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo) is a poet, dramatist, and scholar. [i]Tram 83 is his award-winning and raved-about debut novel that caused a literary sensation when published in France in August 2014.
"Sergio Pitol is not only our best active storyteller, he is also the bravest renovator of our literature."—Álvaro Enrigue in Letras Libres "Pitol is probably one of Mexico's most culturally complex and composite writers. He is certainly the strangest, most unfathomable, and eccentric. . . . [His] voice . . . reverberates beyond the margins of his books."—Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd "Reading him, one has the impression . . . of being before the greatest writer in the Spanish language in our time."—Enrique Vila-Matas The Journey features one of the world's master storytellers at work as he skillfully recounts two weeks of travel around the Soviet Union in 1986. From the first paragraph, Sergio Pitol dislocates the sense of reality, masterfully and playfully blurring the lines between fiction and fact.This adventurous story, based on the author's own travel journals, parades through some of the territories that the author lived in and traveled through (Prague, the Caucasus, Moscow, Leningrad) as he reflects on the impact of Russia's sacred literary pantheon in his life and the power that literature holds over us all. The Journey , the second work in Pitol's remarkable «Trilogy of Memory» (which Deep Vellum is publishing in its entirety), which won him the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2005 and inspired the newest generation of Spanish-language writers, represents the perfect example of one of the world's greatest authors at the peak of his power.
Named a «Best Untranslated Writer» by Granta Winner of the most prestigious Spanish-language award in the world, the Cervantes Prize (in 2005) Author is a major influence on the contemporary generation of Latin American authors such as Roberto Bolaño, Enrique Vila-Matas, and Valeria Luiselli
"Mexico's greatest woman writer."—Roberto Bolaño"A luminous writer . . . Boullosa is a masterful spinner of the fantastic"—[i]Miami HeraldAn imaginative writer in the tradition of Juan Rulfo, Jorge Luis Borges, and Cesar Aira, Carmen Boullosa shows herself to be at the height of her powers with her latest novel. Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, [i]Texas is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland. Boullosa views border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal of each of her wildly diverse characters—Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dancehall girls—makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing.Shedding important historical light on current battles over the Mexican–American frontier while telling a gripping story with Boullosa's singular prose and formal innovation, [i]Texas marks the welcome return of a major writer who has previously captivated American audiences and is poised to do so again.[b]Carmen Boullosa (b. 1954) is one of Mexico's leading novelists, poets, and playwrights. Author of seventeen novels, her books have been translated into numerous world languages. Recipient of numerous prizes and honors, including a Guggenheim fellowship, Boullosa is currently Distinguished Lecturer at City College of New York.[b]Samantha Schnee is founding editor and chairman of the board of [i]Words Without Borders. She has also been a senior editor with [i]Zoetrope, and her translations have appeared in the [i]Guardian, [i]Granta, and the [i]New York Times.