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The African Shore
Rodrigo Rey Rosa
Translated by Jeffrey Gray
In the vein of the writings of
Paul Bowles, Paul Theroux and
V. S. Naipaul, The African Shore
marks a major new instalment in
the genre of dystopic travel
fiction. Rodrigo Rey Rosa,
prominent in today’s Guatemalan
literary world and an author of
growing international reputation,
presents a tale of alienation,
misrecognition, and intrigue set in and around Tangier.
He weaves a double narrative involving a Colombian tourist
pleasurably stranded in Morocco and a young shepherd who
dreams of migrating to Spain and of ‘riches to come’. At the
centre of their tale is an owl both treasured and coveted.
Rey Rosa generates a powerful reality within his imagined
world, and he maintains a narrative tension to the haunting
conclusion, raising small and large questions that linger in the
reader’s mind long after the final page.
Rodrigo Rey Rosa’s works of fiction have been translated and
internationally acclaimed, including Dust on Her Tongue, The
Beggar’s Knife and The Pelcari Project. Jeffrey Gray is professor
of English, Seton Hall University, NJ.
November 96 pp. 210x140mm.
PB ISBN 978-0-300-19610-8 £9.99*
Translation rights: The Wylie Agency, New York
The Origin
of the World
Pierre Michon
Translated by
Wyatt Mason
This spare,
unforgettable novel
is Pierre Michon’s
luminous exploration of the mysteries
of desire. A young teacher takes his first
job in a sleepy French town. Lost in a
succession of rainy days and sleepless
nights, he falls under the spell of a town
resident, a woman of seductive beauty
and singular charm.
Yvonne. Yvonne. ‘Everything about her
screamed desire … setting something in
motion while settling a fingertip to the
counter, turning her head slightly, gold
earrings brushing her cheek while she
watched you or watched nothing at all;
this desire was open, like a wound; and
she knew it, wore it with valor, with
passion’. Michon probes the destructive
powers of passion and the consuming
need for love in this heartbreaking novel.
November 104 pp. 210x140mm.
PB ISBN 978-0-300-18070-1 £9.99*
Translation rights: Editions Verdier, Paris
Literary Studies 71
The Hooligan’s Return
A Memoir
Norman Manea
Translated by Angela Jianu
At the centre of The Hooligan’s
Return is the author himself,
always an outcast, on a bleak
lifelong journey through Nazism
and communism to exile in
America. But while Norman
Manea’s book is in many ways a
memoir, it is also a deeply
imaginative work, traversing time and place, life and literature,
dream and reality, past and present. Autobiographical events
merge with historic elements, always connecting the individual
with the collective destiny. Manea speaks of the bloodiest time
of the 20th century and of the emergence afterward of a
global, competitive and sometimes cynical modern society.
The Hooligan’s Return achieves a subtle internal harmony as
anxiety evolves into a delicate irony and a burlesque fantasy.
Norman Manea is Francis Flournoy Professor of European
Culture and writer-in-residence at Bard College. Since arriving
in the West from his native Romania he has received many
awards, and his work has been translated into more than
twenty languages. Angela Jianu is a translator and historian.
November 400 pp. 210x140mm.
PB ISBN 978-0-300-19780-8 £11.99*
Translation rights: The Wylie Agency, New York
Masters and
Servants
Pierre Michon
Translated by
Wyatt Mason
One of Pierre
Michon’s most
powerful works, this
book imagines decisive moments in the
lives of five artists of different times and
places: Vincent van Gogh, Francisco
Goya, Antoin Watteau, Claude Lorrain
and Lorentino, a little-remembered
disciple of Piero della Francesca.
Each story is a masterpiece that
transcends national boundaries and
earns its place among the essential
works of world literature.
Pierre Michon was winner of the Prix
France Culture in 1984 for his first
book, Small Lives, and of the 1996 Prix
de la Ville de Paris for his body of work.
Wyatt Mason, a contributing writer for
the New York Times Magazine and a
contributing editor at Harper’s, teaches
at Bard College.
November 196 pp. 210x140mm.
PB ISBN 978-0-300-18069-5 £9.99*
Translation rights: Editions Verdier, Paris
Rimbaud
The Son
Pierre Michon
Translated by Jody
Gladding and
Elizabeth Deshays
Rimbaud The Son,
widely celebrated
upon its publication in France,
investigates the life of a writer, the
writing life and the art of life-writing.
Pierre Michon examines the storied life
of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud by
means of a new literary genre: a
meditation on the life of a legend as
witnessed by his contemporaries, those
who knew him before the legends took
hold. Michon introduces us to Rimbaud
the son, friend, schoolboy, renegade,
drunk, sexual libertine, visionary and
ultimately poet. Michon focuses no less
on the creative act: What presses a
person to write? To pursue excellence?
Jody Gladding, a poet and translator,
has translated over twenty books from
the French. Elizabeth Deshays is a
teacher, translator and landscape artist.
November 96 pp. 197x127mm.
PB ISBN 978-0-300-17265-2 £9.99*
Translation rights: Editions Gallimard, Paris
The Margellos World Republic of Letters