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Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
An expatriate professor, Vega, returns from exile in Canada to El
Salvador for his mother's funeral. A sensitive idealist and an
aggrieved motor mouth, he sits at a bar with the author,
Castellanos Moya, from five to seven in the evening, telling his
tale and ranting against everything his country has to offer.
Written in a single paragraph and alive with a fury as astringent
as the wrath of Thomas Bernhard, Revulsion was first published in
1997 and earned its author death threats. Roberto Bolano called
Revulsion Castellanos Moya's darkest book and perhaps his best: "A
parody of certain works by Bernhard and the kind of book that makes
you laugh out loud."
High-octane paranoia deranges a writer and fuels a dangerous plan
to return home at the tail end of El Salvador's long civil war. Is
the plan a dream or a nightmare? Is he courageous, foolhardy, or
just plain dumb? Is the bubbling brew of horrors and threats actual
or imagined? After he seeks relief for liver pain through hypnosis
(while drinking more than ever, despite the treatments), his few
impulse-control mechanisms rapidly dissolve, and reality only
rarely intrudes on his cogitations. Harebrained murder plots,
half-mad arguments, hysterical rants: the narrative escalates at a
maniacal pace, infused with Horacio Castellanos Moya's uniquely
outlandish and acerbic sense of humor.
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Senselessness (Paperback)
Horacio Castellanos Moya; Translated by Katherine Silver
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R383
Discovery Miles 3 830
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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A boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the
Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100
page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of
indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of
the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that
was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure
to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze
the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange
Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were
sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated
and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the
strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous
sanity, and by real danger after all, the murderers are the very
generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country."
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Tyrant Memory (Paperback)
Horacio Castellanos Moya; Translated by Katherine Silver
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R423
Discovery Miles 4 230
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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The tyrant of Horacio Castellanos Moya's ambitious new novel is the
actual pro-Nazi mystic Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez - known as
the Warlock - who came to power in El Salvador in 1932. An
attempted coup in April, 1944, failed, but a general strike in May
finally forced him out of office. Tyrant Memory takes place during
the month between the coup and the strike. Its protagonist, Haydee
Aragon, is a well-off woman, whose husband is a political prisoner
and whose son, Clemente, after prematurely announcing the
dictator's death over national radio during the failed coup, is
forced to flee when the very much alive Warlock starts to
ruthlessly hunt down his enemies. The novel moves between Haydee's
political awakening in diary entries and Clemente's frantic and
often hysterically comic efforts to escape capture. Tyrant Memory -
sharp, grotesque, moving, and often hilariously funny - is an
unforgettable incarnation of a coun- try's history in the destiny
of one family.
From London, Madrid, and Berlin to Seoul, New York, and Mexico
City, this anthology describes the feeling of first arriving in 11
international cities from the perspective of 11 different Latin
American writers. Although today anyone can virtually be anywhere
in the world at the click of a button, this book attests that
nothing compares to physically being in a city, being scared and
delighted at the same time, and absorbing everything the place has
to offer as well as all that it can hide. With grace and
imagination, these fresh voices explain why they love--and
sometimes hate--these cities. ""Desde Londres, Madrid y Berlin
hasta Seul, Nueva York y la Ciudad de Mexico, esta antologia
describe el sentimiento de llegar por primera vez a 11 ciudades
internacionales desde la perspectiva de 11 escritores
latinoamericanos diferentes. Aunque hoy el que sea puede estar en
cualquier lugar del mundo a un clic de raton, este libro expone que
nada puede comparar con estar fisicamente en una ciudad, estar
asustado y encantado a la vez y absorber todo lo que puede ofrecer
el lugar asi como todo lo que puede ocultar. Con gracia e
imaginacion, estas voces frescas explican por que aman--y a veces
odian--estas ciudades.""
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