The Neighborhood
I went into this book expecting the wrong things; I thought I had picked up a novel with, y’know, plot, but the 280 pages of Gonçalo Tavares’ The Neighborhood are filled with vignettes—“chapters” ranging from tiny to small, with concise titles and little-to-no binding between them—sorted by each of six ...
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And the Hippies Came (Llegaron los hippies)
Kids these days. They think they’ve invented everything. The McOndo writers and Crack Generation, who so proudly buck the Magic Realist tendencies of GarcĂa Márquez, who seek to find a place within Latin American letters sans spirits . . . they’ve got their heads in the right place even if their books aren’t always ...
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Oh, Apple
So, Nate submitted the ebook version of Zone, our 517-page, one-sentence book to the various ebook vendors this week, and got this amazing “error ticket” from Apple: Please include indents before paragraphs and/or blank lines between paragraphs. See the iBookstore Formatting Guidelines, section ...
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One of the Coolest Publishers in the World
I first met Urvashi Butalia at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair back some years ago, and was immediately wowed. There are few people in the world as intelligent, out-spoken, sharp, and charming as Urvashi. And her publishing house, Zubaan Books, is incredible. Since that time, I’ve hung out with Urvashi in ...
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Traveler of the Century
When I was about two-thirds of the way through Neuman’s very ambitious, very engrossing novel, Bromance Will Evans asked me what I thought the purpose the rapist had in this book. Not who the rapist was—something that’s held in suspense until almost the end of the book—but why he was even in there. ...
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A Second Review of "Traveler of the Century"
I’ve been meaning to read AndrĂ©s Neuman’s Traveler of the Century ever since we ran Jeremy Garber’s review back in April 2012. And then it made the Best Translated Book Award longlist, which further peaked my interest. But man, it’s a 500+ page book—something that’s never easy to fit into ...
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"Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons: Lesson Eleven" by Antoine Volodine [A Sample]
As promised, here’s an excerpt from Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons: Lesson Eleven which we’ll be bringing out next year. It’s a pretty amazing text, which, as you’ll see, is filled with intertextuality, literary games, and horrible smells. Enjoy! Lutz Bassmann passed his final days as we all did, ...
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