Adelanto - 'Antes de las jirafas', de Matías Candeira

En febrero Páginas de Espuma publicará 'Antes de las jirafas', el nuevo libro de Matías Candeira. Como adelanto podéis leer uno de los relatos incluidos en el libro: 'Manhattan Pulp'

(Pinchad aqui)

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Antes de las jirafas

Matías Candeira

Páginas de Espuma, 2011

Antes de las jirafas es un viaje a las mutaciones de la vida feliz que alguna vez tuvimos. Con su escritura irónica y demoledora, Matías Candeira te ofrece un safari por la oscuridad de nuestro origen, donde las nevadas carreteras de lo real quedan cada vez más lejos.

Aquí encontrarás gente que te habla con la voz de los viejos cómics, la sombra al otro lado de la puerta, la luz radiactiva de The twilight zone y esas viñetas en las que Peter Parker llegaba tarde a una cita por atrapar a unos ladrones de banco. Pronto aprenderás a querer a estos monstruos que en realidad son tú.

El nostálgico regreso a Baltimore de un asesino en serie para reunirse con su novia del instituto. Un padre y un hijo que cazan hombres a las afueras de una granja derruida. La amistad entre un buzo y un pervertido con gabardina que detesta los refugios antiatómicos. El viajero del tiempo que se transporta siempre al mismísimo bucle de su felicidad.

Y, cómo no, criaturas de color amarillo, moteles, tentáculos dormidos bajo el mar, familias que no abren la puerta de casa a extraños. Sí, todo lo que alguna vez pudimos desear en los sueños.

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Matías Candeira (Madrid, 1984) es escritor y guionista, licenciado en Comunicación Audiovisual por la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Diplomado en Guion cinematográfico por la ECAM. Imparte talleres de escritura creativa y relato breve en Escuela de Escritores y colabora en medios como "La tormenta en un vaso" o "Culturamas".

Durante los últimos años, su trayectoria ha sido avalada por numerosos premios literarios de prestigio, entre otros muchos: el Premio de Cuentos Ignacio Aldecoa, Certamen de Jóvenes Creadores del Ayuntamiento de Madrid o el Premio Internacional de Narrativa Tomás Fermín de Arteta.

Es autor de La soledad de los ventrílocuos (2009), y muchos de sus relatos han sido recogidos en revistas y antologías, entre otras: Aquelarre (2010), Los noveles (n.º 34), Quimera (nº 320- 321; dosier de relatos); Siglo XXI: los nuevos nombres del cuento español actual (2010) o Pequeñas Resistencias 5. Antología del nuevo cuento español 2001-2010 (Páginas de Espuma, 2010).

Sobre Matías Candeira se ha dicho:

«El joven Matías Candeira es víctima también del vicio de escribir», Mario Vargas Llosa, El oficio de escribir.

«Antes de las jirafas es un libro atravesado por la imaginación y la audacia, que combina el goce de la experimentación, la libertad de las vanguardias, y el magnetismo incomparable de la cultura popular», Ángel Zapata.

«Estamos ante el nacimiento de un escritor llamado a grandes prosas. Alguien que dará mucho que hablar. Mucho (y bien) que leer», Tino Pertierra, La Nueva España.

«Cuentos de diseño perfecto que nos fascinan e inquietan; argumentos distintos para lectores sin prejuicios, y lirismo y libertad y puro juego», Elena Medel, Calle 20.

Blade of Light (El filo de la hierba), by Harkaitz Cano, out in the USA

The University of Nevada Press (USA) has already published the translation into English of Harkaitz Cano's 'Blade of Light' (El filo de la Hierba) in its Basque Literature series.

Blade of Light is a uchronia—an alternate history—in its main plot line, Hitle

r has won the Second World War and now dominates Europe. He then decides to conquer fi

rst Manhattan and then the whole American continent. His journey takes him to New York on a ship aboard which Charles Chaplin is also traveling.

Chaplin has been imprisoned and tortured on account of his film The Great Dictator, which remains a pesky thorn in Hitler’s side.

On a second level another story is told—that of a stowaway who traveled to New York in 1886 hidden inside the crown of the Statue of Liberty. The fate of this stowaway, Olivier Legrand, crosses Chaplin’s, who manages to escape from his torturers and finds refuge with the now old man.

The originality of the story has its narrative counterpoint in Cano’s attractive prose style, full of images and lyricism. A master of “what if ?” and suspense, the novel is also an important reflection on life and the process of writing and artistic creation.

Harkaitz Cano (Donostia, 1975) writes fiction and poetry. Among his books are Neguko zirkua (2005), a collection of short stories, and Piano gainean gosaltzen (2000), a chronicle born of the time he spent in New York before the 9/11.

Also connected to his stay in this city is the poetry collection Norbait dabil sute-eskaileran (2001). He is a seasoned scriptwriter for audiovisual media and comics, and his novels have been translated into Russian, Greek and German.

What are those?

What are those?

Those are Mostrinhos da Roupa Suja (Little Dirty Clothes Monsters). You'll hear more about them soon...

Quaderns Crema acquires now Catalan rights of 'Spring Collection', by György Spiró

Shortly after we announced the deal for Spanish rights with publishing house Acantilado, Quaderns Crema (its sister imprint publishing in Catalan) has also acquired translation rights of ‘Spring Collection’, the new novel by György Spiró, one of the most acclaimed and successful contemporary Hungarian writers.

The deal was made on behalf of Magveto Publishing House (Hungary).

“It’s not a bad idea for a man to get admitted to hospital a couple of days before a revolution breaks out, stay in until it’s been quashed and recuperate quietly at home during the ensuing purge.” These are the opening lines of György Spiró’s latest novel, Spring Collection, that presents the reader with a shocking picture of the 56 Hungarian Revolution.

Read more about 'Spring Collection' (here).

Baile del Sol (Spain) will publish Ricardo Adolfo's 'Depois de morrer aconteceram-me muitas cosas'

Ediciones Baile del Sol has just acquired translation rights into Spanish of Ricardo Adolfo's novel 'Depois de morrer aconteceram-me muitas cosas'. The novel will be published in 2011.

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Lots Happened to Me After I Died

by Ricardo Adolfo

Alfaguara Portugal, 2009

* Included in the list of the Best Books published in Portugal in 2009 (Ler Magazine)

“From Amsterdam, where he lives, young Portuguese writer Ricardo Adolfo observes his country with fierce and slashing irony. Only from afar can you see this close. A writer that Portugal needs to discover.”

José Eduardo Agualusa -Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2007

“The new Portuguese literature has to go through here.”

valter hugo mãe - Winner of the José Saramago Literary Award 2007

"If an Author is easily identified by an originality of style, a coherence of inspiration and a capacity to impress, then Ricardo Adolfo is clearly, along with João Tordo, the most notable writer of his generation". Newspaper Sol (Portugal)

Lots Happened to Me After I Died, by Ricardo Adolfo, was selected as the first and leading title in Portuguese language to be published by Alfaguara Portugal, the Portuguese branch of Santillana Group (Spain), launched in September 2009.

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A young couple and their son, recently arrived illegal immigrants in a big city, are left stranded halfway home when their tube train breaks down. It soon becomes clear they don’t know any alternative route home – and nor can they ask for help as they don’t speak a word of the local language.

Confused, they walk through streets carrying their son inside a newly bought suitcase that doubles as a pram. By turns they are chased by two frightened women in hijab, abandoned by a runaway bus driver, robbed by a gang of street kids, and finally end up stealing a spare sleeping bag from a homeless man. The family’s traditional Sunday outing around the shopping streets – streets littered with bankruptcies and boarded-up façades – becomes a 24-hour marathon of revelations and confrontations that could make the couple inseparable, or could tear them apart.

Narrated by the husband, a loner locked inside his own mind, who believes that to make a good decision he has to do just the opposite of what he thinks is right, the novel explores the internal fight of someone forced into seclusion because he is unable to communicate with the world around him.

Combining a fast-paced narrative, quirky dialogues and a strong visual sense with an unflinching social conscience, Lots Happened to Me After I Died exposes the struggle of ‘internal’ immigration – much more overwhelming than any physical displacement.

Ricardo Adolfo is an Angolan-born Portuguese writer. Currently he is based between London and Amsterdam. In 2006 Dom Quixote published his debut novel Mizé. Mizé was very well received in Portugal and has subsequently been translated into Spanish (Suma) under the title of La peluquera de Lisboa, German (Berlin Verlag/Bloomsbury Berlin) and Dutch (Querido).

This year it has been reprinted in Portugal by Alfaguara Portugal.

In 2007 he was creative consultant of the short film There’s Only One Sun, shot by award-winning director Wong Kar-Wai. (See it here)

Lots Happened to Me After I Died is Ricardo’s third book and continues to explore some of the author’s favourite themes, such as the mixture between the banal and the uncanny, and the peaks of tension in the ordinary and mundane.

His writing has been praised for its “…maverick writing, sober and elevated, with an amazingly fine-tuned sense of oral syntax. The dialogue is perfect. Nothing in literature is harder than ‘natural dialogue’…” Fernando Venâncio, writer and critic.

* “Lots happened to me after I died” is a big, enjoyable surprise. Ricardo Adolfo is able to easily pass on those problems that are common to all emigrants: from feeling invisible in the host country, to the uncertainty about the future, the exploitation suffered, the quest for symbols of personal success, etc.

“Diario Digital” (Portugal)

'Trago amargo' by F.G. Haghenbeck will be out in Serbia in December

Trago amargo is a story of intrigue, an accurate historical depiction of Hollywood, a very unique ambience and a funny compendium of the best and most famous cocktails of the world. It also has tastes of road movie, adventure and detective stories.

Originally published by Joaquín Mortiz (México) is one of those stories that ‘one writes at ease, like being at home’ says Francisco Gerardo Haghenbeck, its author (Mexico City, 1965). With this work the author was unanimously awarded the National Una Vuelta de Tuerca Award to the best crime novel in Mexico. (2006).

At the beginning of the 70s, John Huston decides to shoot his film The Night of the Iguana (based on the play by Tennessee Williams) in a virgin lanscape very close to Puerto Vallarta (Mexico). An impressive crew of Holywood starts is to be part of the cast, including Ava Gardner, Sue Lyon, Deborah Kerr and Richard Burton, who is dating Elizabeth Taylor. There are more journalists than iguanas on the village, all expecting to take the best pic of the couple.

Each of the stars receives a present from the Director: a golden gun with silver bullets. But the joke turns to something serious when one of those guns is used to shot and kill someone. Sunny Pascal, a half american and half mexican beatnick detective, is in charge of solving the crime, which soon gets complicated by further murders, blackmailing, stolen jewels and a plot that involves the Mexican mafia.

The novel keeps advancing and unveiling its mysteries chapter by chapter, amongst cocktail recipes, explanations about their origins and suggestions about the music that best fits every drink.

Trago amargo will also be published in France by Denoël in Spring 2011

Acantilado acquires Spanish rights of György Spiró's 'Tavaszi Tárlat' (Spring Collection)

Spanish publishing house Acantilado has been the first international publisher to acquire translation rights of the new novel by one of the most acclaimed and successful contemporary Hungarian writers, György Spiró.

The deal was made on behalf of Magveto Publishing House (Hungary).

“It’s not a bad idea for a man to get admitted to hospital a couple of days before a revolution breaks out, stay in until it’s been quashed and recuperate quietly at home during the ensuing purge.” These are the opening lines of György Spiró’s latest novel, Spring Collection, that presents the reader with a shocking picture of the 56 Hungarian Revolution.

The main protagonist is an engineer by the name of Gyula Fátray who, like so many other qualified professionals at that time, is trying to get along first as a simple worker before the Second World War, and after it as a communist party member, an idealist, and leader of planning in a newly founded factory. Just days before mass protests begin in October, he is admitted to hospital for for surgery. He returns home after the fighting to be faced by a Soviet-occupied Budapest.

This novel commemorates the unbearably absurd machinations of the dictatorial regime in which not even those innocent could feel safe. When Gyula’s name appears in a newspaper article alongside some conspirators against the state, he finds himself ostracised by his best friends and closest colleagues virtually overnight. It no longer seems to matter that he was in hospital for the duration of the revolution and that the charges are false. Just as in Kafka’s Trial, history marches mercilessly towards an excruciating outcome.

Gyula’s situation is made all the more difficult by the fact that his wife, Kati, a tough communist, seems not to understand a thing because she is so wrapped up in herself and her role in organising an art installation known as the Spring Collection. The novel recalls the purges that came after 56 with touching authenticity.

György Spiró was born in 1946 in Budapest. He is a writer, a dramatist, a translator and scholar of Polish literature. He is one of the most frequently played contemporary playwrights of Hungary.

Atmosphere Libri acquires rights of 'Bienvenidos a Welcome', by Laura Fernández

We are happy to announce the deal for Italian rights of 'Bienvenidos a Welcome', by Laura Fernández, a delirious fable about society. The novel, published in Spanish in 2008, will be released in Italy by Atmosphere Libri, publishers amongst others of authors such as Belén Gopegui, Andrés Barba, Martín Casariego or Manuel de Pedrolo.

"As in a fight between Aristophanes and Elmer, from The Muppets, the absurdity has finally triumphed. If Alfred Jarry was brought back to life, he would live in Welcome". La Razón.

"Laura Fernández, our particular Brautigan, has taken a yet undiscovered pill. Have no qualms about testing it. It gives you (...) lots of laughs and no hangover" Philipp Engel, Fotogramas.

Welcome. A future world. Full of shopping malls, residential estates and big Stars.

A place where politics, journalism and any other event of public life runs like a TV Show. But reality (a striking one indeed) is about to burst onto this happy world. An unidentified flying object has just crashed into one of Welcome’s shopping centres. Thousands might be dead…

The city’s main newspaper (The Welcome Times), magazine (Nasty Tongues) and TV (Welcome TV), set off to cover the news and compete between themselves. Is it all about a new advertising campaign? Is it a new sit-com? Is the mayor facing a revolt? Is it that Rondy Rondy, the mythical disappeared author, has come back? Or is it really a true UFO driven by a fury alien?

In any case, you are about to find out about everything and, in the process, you will meet the intrepid journalist Lu Ken, the dwarf mayor Claudio Arden, the only survivor of the accident, Sarah Du, the great diva Anita Velasco, the candidate to the Welcomitzer award Clark Roth and many others… and you arrive in the best moment because, after this accident, Welcome (the genuine and only centre of the future civilized world) will never be the same. You are warned.

Laura Fernández (Terrassa, 1981) is a freelance journalist. She’s now a contributor to El Mundo, Qué Leer, Mondo Sonoro and Go-Mag. Before this she worked in other media and in TV. She’s also the author of Dos y dos son cinco (Two plus Two are Five), published by Basarai.

In 2011 Seix Barral will publish her new novel: 'Wendolin Kramer'.

Read a Spanish review about 'Bienvenidos a Welcome' (here)

'Hierba Santa' will be published in Italy as well!

Rizzoli (RCS group, Italy) has acquired Italian Rights of ‘Hierba Santa’ (Sacred Herbs), by F.G. Haghenbeck, for publication in 2011.

Originally published in Spanish by Editorial Planeta Mexicana (Mexico only).

Rights also sold to: Atria Books/Simon & Schuster (World English), Suhrkamp/Insel (Germany), Orlando Publishers/Bruna (The Netherlands), Planeta Brasil (Brazil), Shangai 99 (China).

Hierba Santa, with echoes of Magic Realism, is a vivid and tender homage to Frida Khalo, a woman who changed the course of modern art and has become an icon for many people all over the world.

For more info about its plot click (here)

Clandestinidad, la nueva novela de Gustavo Dessal, será publicada por Interzona (Argentina) este mes de Noviembre

Un hecho fortuito que le toca vivir al protagonista llevará al lector a descubrir una serie de situaciones que tuvieron lugar durante la dictadura militar. Desde el aparente azar, escorzos del paso a la clandestinidad serán relatados vertiginosamente a partir de dos vidas paralelas: una joven militante cada vez más involucrada con las acciones de su organización, y un hombre común, que, transformado en una pieza más de la maquinaria infernal de aquellos años de plomo, continuará sus días impunemente, en la más subterránea invisibilidad.

Escrita en un lenguaje roto y descarnado, esta obra constituye la anatomía psicológica de un personaje anónimo y atroz, encarnación de esa terrible banalidad que Hannah Arendt atribuía al mal.

Clandestinidad traza con precisión las líneas de una historia perturbadora, que provocará el enfrentamiento irreversible con todo lo siniestro que transita entre nosotros.

Gustavo Dessal (Buenos Aires en 1952). Psicoanalista, miembro de la Asociación Mundial de Psicoanálisis y escritor. Se formó en Buenos Aires y en París, y ejerce la práctica clínica desde hace más de treinta años. En 1982 se estableció en Madrid, donde complementó su actividad terapéutica con la enseñanza del psicoanálisis. Dictó seminarios y conferencias en España, la Argentina, Brasil, Inglaterra, Irlanda, Francia e Italia, y ha sido profesor invitado en la Universidad Menéndez Pelayo, la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y las universidades del País Vasco, Murcia, Granada y Barcelona. Publicó más de un centenar de artículos en revistas especializadas, los libros de cuentos Operación Afrodita (Huerga y Fierro, 2004) y Mas líbranos del bien ( Huerga y Fierro, 2006), la novela Principio de Incertidumbre (RBA, 2009) y el ensayo Las ciencias inhumanas (RBA, 2009).

Sobre ‘Principio de incertidumbre’:

(...) un verdadero festín literario, al que se suma el nombre de Gustavo Dessal, (...) Psicólogo de formación, autor de un par de colecciones de relatos anteriores, nos sorprende con una historia compleja desde sus inicios. Tramas paralelas, saltos cronológicos, gran variedad de personajes y de gran calado psicológico. (...) Hay sentido del humor, suspense magnético y personajes estupendos.

- El Cultural (25/10/2009)

Una trama que recuerda a un guión cinematográfico y engancha al lector desde la primera página.

- Estrella digital (25/05/2009)

Hay escritos virtuosos y escritores fascinantes. En Gustavo Dessal convergen ambos sucesos. Leerle es adentrarse en un entramado de pulsiones humanas; leerle es conocernos un poco más a nosotros mismos; leerle ilumina las zonas más umbrías del ser.

- Solidaridad Digital (21/06/09)

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Clandestinidad, de Gustavo Dessal

Ed. Interzona (Argentina), 2010