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From the famous Mexican author, Sergio Pitol, comes his 1988
classic translated by George Henson. Taming the Divine Heron, tells
the semi-autobiographical story of a novelist working on his newest
masterpiece. The protagonist struggles to tell the perfect
story–his own, imagined protagonists mere imitations of the likes
of Lord Jim and Alyosha Karamavoz. To help eradicate writer’s
block, Pitol uses his vessel to praise his own favorite authors.
Pitol applauds Bakhtin’s world building, Gogol’s
“carnivalesque [literary] breath”, and Dante’s dizzying
intensity. The character finds a muse in Marietta Karapetiz who he
aptly dubs Dante C. de la Estrella, and the two debate the literary
greats. As the pair attempt to pull from the techniques of the
world’s best writers, Pitol creates a love letter to literature
from around the globe while simultaneously telling his own magical
story. To quote Pitol’s protagonist, “the quality of the story,
its effects, its brilliance, its intensity, ma[k]e the most absurd
circumstances plausible”. Taming of The Divine Heron,
second in a trilogy including already-published The Love
Parade (Deep Vellum, 2022), houses history, hyperrealism,
myth, folklore, and memoir; to read Pitol is to appreciate the
power of language.
Following the chance discovery of certain documents, a historian
sets out to unravel the mystery of a murder committed in his
childhood Mexico City home in the autumn of 1942. Mexico had just
declared war on Germany, and its capital had recently become a
colorful cauldron of the most unusual and colorful of the European
ilk: German communists, Spanish republicans, Trotsky and his
disciples, Balkan royalty, agents of the most varied secret
services, opulent Jewish financiers, and more. As the
historian-turned-detective begins his investigation, he introduces
us to a rich and eccentric gallery of characters, the media of
politics, the newly installed intelligentsia, and beyond.
Identities are crossed, characters are confounded; Pitol constructs
a novel that turns on mistaken identities, blurred memories, and
conflicting interests, and whose protagonist is haunted by the
ever-looming possibility of never uncovering the truth. At the same
time a fast-paced detective investigation and an uproarious comedy
of errors, this novel cemented Pitol's place as one of Latin
America's most important twentieth-century authors. Winner of the
Herralde Prize in 1984, The Love Parade is the first installment of
what Pitol would later dub his Carnival Triptych. "This novel is
not only the best that Pitol has written, but one of the best
novels in Mexican literature." -Sergio Gonzalez Rodriguez, La
Jornada "Sergio Pitol in the splendor of his mastery. A great
novel." -Florian Borchmeyer, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
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The Journey (Paperback)
Sergio Pitol; Translated by George Henson; Introduction by Álvaro Enrigue
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R325
R274
Discovery Miles 2 740
Save R51 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"Reading Pitol, 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.
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The Magician of Vienna (Paperback)
Sergio Pitol; Translated by George Henson; Introduction by Mario Bellatin; Afterword by Margo Glantz
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R416
R355
Discovery Miles 3 550
Save R61 (15%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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"We can read The Magician of Vienna not just as a work of
literature but as one of the Holy Books in which we store
humanity's imaginary." -- Mario Bellatin, author of Beauty Salon
The heartbreaking final volume in Sergio Pitol's groundbreaking
memoir-essay-fiction-hybrid "Trilogy of Memory" finds Pitol boldly
and passionately weaving fiction and autobiography together to tell
of his life lived through literature as a way to stave off the
advancement of a degenerative neurological condition causing him to
lose the use of language. Fiction invades autobiography--and vice
versa--as Pitol writes to forestall the advancement of degenerative
memory loss. "Pitol's writing -- the way he constructs sentences,
inflects Spanish, twists meanings and stresses particular words --
reflects the multiplicity of languages he has read and embraced.
Reading him is like reading through the layers of many languages at
once." -- Valeria Luiselli, author of The Story of My Teeth Sergio
Pitol, the greatest living Mexican writer, winner of the Juan Rulfo
and Cervantes prizes, is profoundly influential to the current
generation of Spanish-language writers, including Valeria Luiselli,
Enrique Vila-Matas, and Yuri Herrera.
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