ARGOSY · Nanina Sylvia Molloy 33 En breve cárcel Jorge di Paola 33 Minga! Ana Basualdo 34 Oldsmobile 1962 C. E. Feiling 34 El mal menor Nicolas Casullo 35 Orificio Patrice Lessard

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A R G O S Y F O R E I G N R I G H T S A G E N C Y

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A R G O S Y


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A B O U T U S

Argosy Foreign Rights Agency, founded in

2012, manages foreign rights for all titles or

for specific authors on behalf of internation-

al publishers and literary agents, and attend

all major book fairs (Frankfurt, Guadalajara,

London, Salone del Libro, Bologna, Buenos

Aires). We sell rights worldwide with a core

in the following territories: English speak-

ing countries, France, Italy, Latin America,

Spain, Portugal and Brazil. In some coun-

tries, we work with co-agents.

Our focus is on Portuguese, Brazilian, Cata-

lan and Latin American literature.

We also specialize in selling rights for Eng-

lish and French language non-fiction titles

(radical and critical thinking) to the Latin

American market.

Caterina focuses on fiction books from

Catalonia, Latin America and Francophone

countries.

Email: [email protected]

Sarah mainly works with Portuguese, Brazilian

and Latin American fiction authors.


Heber is in charge of our non-fiction list.


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I N D E X

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/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / P O R T U G A LManuel Jorge Marmelo 10 Uma mentira mil vezes repetida Somos todos um bocado ciganos Jorge Araujo 11 Comandante HussiJoão Leal 12 AlçapãoFernando Sobral 12 Ela cantava fadosMário Zambujal 13 Crónica dos bons malandros Dama de espadas CafunéAlexandra Lucas Coelho 14 E a noite roda Viva Mexico Tahir Caderno afegãoVirgilio Ferreira 15 Aparição Manhã submersa Em nome da terraAquilino Ribeiro 16 Cinco reis de gente

Rodrigo Lacerda 18 Vista do Rio O mistério do leão rampante Outra vidaJoão Gilberto Noll 19 LordeGodofredo de Oliveira Neto 19 Amores exilados

Max Besora 22 VulcanoVictor Nubla 23 El regal de GlieseSalvador Giralt 23 L’EntrepàManel de la Rosa 24 Cada color d’un riu Marc Romera 25 La mala vida Tuli Márquez 25 L’endemà

PORTUGAL

BRAZIL

CATALONIA

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/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / P O R T U G A LAlejandro Jodorowsky 28 Donde mejor canta un pajaroHernán Castellano Girón 29 Llamaradas de naftaAlejandra Costamagna 29 En voz baja

Serie del Recienvenido, edited by Ricardo Piglia

Germán García 32 Nanina Sylvia Molloy 33 En breve cárcel Jorge di Paola 33 Minga! Ana Basualdo 34 Oldsmobile 1962 C. E. Feiling 34 El mal menorNicolas Casullo 35 Orificio

Patrice Lessard 38 Nina Le sermon aux poissonsNicolas Chalifour 39 Vu d’ici tout est petitGabriel Anctil 39 Sur la 132Nelly Arcan 40 Paradis clef en mainDominic C. Iannuzzi 41 City of sinners Penance is for the weakBarry Webster 42 Lava in my bonesClint Burnham 42 Smoke show

CHILE

ARGENTINA

QUEBEC AND CANADA

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The Great Romani Circus is like no other. It might seem like a typical circus but it is not. The artists live precarious lives in trailers and play different characters, like any other circus. They are clowns and acrobats, magicians and animal tamers. The circumstances of a brutal accident and a shady crime whose victim is a singing donkey called Pavarotti provide the pretext giving readers an in depth look into the characters populating this particular circus, and their daily lives. The story goes on to show the point of view of a teenage member of a family, who is often isolated by the other circus people because of his gypsy roots. His dream is to have a motorcycle to play daredevil. One day he spies the beautiful trapeze artist and starts wondering about the time when he will finally be able to date a woman like a proper grown up.

M A N U E L J O R G E M A R M E L OManuel Jorge Marmelo was born in Porto, in 1971. He started his career as a journalist in 1989,

working for the national daily newspaper Publico, and in 1996 received an honourable mention at the Premios Gazeta de Jornalismo of the Clube de Jornalismo. His first published book O homem que julgou morrer de amor (Campo das Letras) opened the series Campo de Estreia in 1996. He is considered by critics as one of the most promising young Portuguese writers.

SOMOS TODOS UM BOCADO CIGANOS UMA MENTIRA MIL VEZES REPETIDAA lie told a thousand times We are all a bit gypsy

To escape the anonymity of an ordinary life, the solitude of writing and the possible oblivion of ungrateful readers, the narrator of this book creates his most monumental work of fiction, The conquered city: a lie that he then tells a thousand times. He creates the book from a collage of essays by Borges and newspaper cuttings that he then pretends to read while sitting on the bus. He invents a fictional author, Oscar Schidin-ski, a Hungarian Jew with an adventurous life and a myriad of characters and stories that the narrator then tells enthusi-astically to whoever sits next to him on public transportation.

We are soon introduced to the main character of The conquered city and his unusual stories; the tragedy of the ze-bra-man from Polvorosa; the chaos of the post office of Gra-nada; the curse of the sailor Albrecht, and the memoirs of the old man Afonso Cão.

As the bus approaches the village of Cedofeita, or passes the street of Bolhão, whoever listens to the storyteller travels from Belize to Budapest or passes through Honduras, seclud-ed alpine resorts, Toulouse or Lisbon. At the end, even if our narrator doesn’t encounter his sought after glory other than his popularity among the few who had believed his lie - he might have found love. Or is that a lie too?

P U B L I S H E R : QuetzalL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 144R I G H T S : World ex Brazil


SOMOS TODOS UM BOCADO CIGANOS We are all a bit gypsy

UMA MENTIRA MIL VEZES REPETIDA A lie told a thousand times

Manuel Jorge MarmeloManuel Jorge Marmelo

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J O R G E A R A Ú J O Jorge Araújo was born in 1959 in the city of Mindelo, island of S. Vicente, Cape Verde. He started

as a television journalist and then went through a brief diplomatic career.

In Portugal he achieved his goal to be a reporter. He worked for O Independente, Já, Correio da Manhã and TVI. He also worked in London for the BBC. He is currently an editor at Actual (weekly supplement of Expresso). He also wrote O Dia em que a Noite se Perdeu and Nem tudo começa com um beijo.

P E D R O S O U S A P E R E I R A Pedro Sousa Pereira was born in 1966 in Angola but raised in Porto (Portugal), he is a journalist

and illustrator. He also worked on a famous collection of porcelains for Vista Alegre, celebrating Portuguese history and its traditions.

“Captain Hussi is a true and touching story. A boy who talks to his bike: despite the war. “

Rita Pimenta in Mil Folhas (Publico, 2003)

“An African fable told in a universal language. [...] Captain Hussi is, without doubt, mandatory reading, a sort of “the war explained to children” whose reading is recommended to all adults. A tale constructed through the relationship between a boy (Hussi) and his bike allows the author [...] to hold us com-

fortably hanging from his own imagination. “

Ana Cristina Leonardo, Actual (Expresso, 2003)

COMANDANTE HUSSI Captain Hussi

Captain Hussi was a real person, born in Guinea-Bissau, on the bank of a now dry river. He was only twelve when the war shattered his world. He had to leave behind home, school, family, friends and go the front line.

During the war, he dodged bombs and bullets, stumbled on abandoned corpses and ate “one handful of air” a day. He walked by human misery with the same innocence which he used to ride his bicycle. This is, in fact, the leitmotif of the book: the immaterial presence of the magical bicycle of the protag-onist, which has the power to telepathically speak to the nar-rator and protect him and his troops from danger. So big is the power of this bicycle that the local dictator demands its saddle on a silver dish, creating panic in the narrator who puts his life at risk by going back to his native village to save his beloved friend, which he buried under his home before leaving for war.

The beautiful and amusing story of this boy and his bicy-cle during a civil war is the plot chosen by Jorge Araújo, and turned into images by the stunning watercolors of Pedro Sousa Pereira.

Delightfully intelligent, poetic and humorous, Captain Hussi is a life lesson that is very hard to forget.

P U B L I S H E R : Clube do autorL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 112R I G H T S : WorldwideS O L D T O : Brazil (Editora 34) and Spain (Kalandra)

COMANDANTE HUSSICaptain HussiJorge AraújoIllustrated by Pedro Sousa Pereira

WINNER OF THE GULBENKIAN PRIZE FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN 2003

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ELA CANTAVA FADOS The fado singer

Lisbon is a lot more than a city of shiny lights to attract the tourists. Many untold secrets are hidden behind the romantic facades of its buildings and walls of its modern palaces. Some of these secrets are so dark that they can bring death to those who would never have thought of it so early in life.

When a young and very talented fado singer is found mur-dered, the detective Manuel da Rosa immediately finds himself caught in an unknown world, even to a man like himself, who fought many wars and had many solved cases under his belt.

Fado is not only melancholy. Fado is also revenge. It can be connected to finance, in a world where everything has a price because everything is for sale. Even love. From suspect to suspect, the detective goes through a city that already lives in the future but has never really been able to forget its past. A city very similar to him. A man trapped between two worlds, who is still not completely sure of what exactly is the nature of his relationship with Ana Moreno, the only part of his past he cannot forget...

ALÇAPÃO The Trapdoor

When Rodrigo reaches Saint John’s Orphanage he soon re-alizes that he will have to grow up quickly if he plans to survive the code of violence that rules the lives of orphans. The arrival of a new and unorthodox priest brings him a vision of hope that promises to change everything. When Rodrigo leaves the insti-tution to start a new life, a family curse emerges from the past. A series of brutal killings will bring him and Jorge, his only friend from Saint John’s, into a supernatural place hidden behind a mysterious trapdoor.

Adrift in the middle of the sea, the people of the floating island of Lothar, believe they are the only survivors of the Great Flood. In the middle of the island, inside a giant tree, lives a fallen angel who they take for their god. One event, however, will change everything and leave two of the island inhabitants no choice but to leave.

Leal, in this homage to adventure and fantasy novels, bril-liantly stirs together two distinct narratives, happening in differ-ent times in history, to finally join them again in what can be seen as a decisive moment for the history of mankind.


ALÇAPÃOThe TrapdoorJoão Leal

P U B L I S H E R : QuetzalL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 272R I G H T S : World ex BrazilS A M P L E : English

ELA CANTAVA FADOS The fado singerFernando Sobral

J O Ã O L E A L

João Leal was born in Lisbon in 1973. He studied Theology but nev-

er completed the course. He’s been working in bookselling and publishing since 1997 and between 2003 and 2005 kept a blog called, Bicho Escala Estantes. He is married with two children and lives in Sintra. Alçapão is his first novel and he is now working on a second one.

F E R N A N D O S O B R A LFernando Sobral is a Portu-

guese journalist who has worked for many national newspapers in-

cluding Semanário, O Independente and Diário Económico. He was also managing editor of the weekly entertainment magazine, Se7e. He still works for various prestigious Portu-guese newspapers and has written the novels: Na Pista da Dança and Torre de Papel. He also co-authored Barings, a História do Banco Britânico que Salvou Portugal.

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M Á R I O Z A M B U J A LMário Zambujal is a Portuguese journalist and writer, born in 1936, who worked for television

and national papers like A Bola, Diário de Lisboa and Diário de Notícias.

CRÓNICA DOS BONSMALANDROSChronicle of the good scoundrels

First published in 1980, the book achieved such great literary success that director Fernando Lopes turned it into a movie in 1984, and a new edition of the title was released in 2004.

The book chronicles the daily lives of out of ordinary members of a gang that refuse the use of weapons of any kind and whose boss is nicknamed “the Peaceful” due to his hatred of guns. This book follows the lives of each individual member of the gang (recounting how they met) while they prepare for the robbery of a lifetime: stealing a collection of Lalique jewelry from the Gulbenkian museum in Lisbon. Amusing and lighthearted, it is the story of a gang of outsiders looking for a place in this world.

CAFUNÉCafuné

Cafuné, set in Lisbon in the 19th Cen-tury, revolves around the character of Rodrigo Favinhas Mendes, a wise guy who cannot resist a beautiful woman. Rodrigo strikes up an unlikely friendship with a for-mer friar, Urbino de Santiago, who ends up being his advisor and spiritual guide. The problem is that Rodrigo has a very big heart: often occupied by many beautiful women whom he cannot resist...

DAMAS DE ESPADAS Queen of spades

With an admirable narrative rhythm, clear writing style and his usual dose of hu-mor, Mário Zambujal introduces us to Eva Teresa Lucas, aged eleven, and Philip, a young man of eighteen, who is dating Eva Teresa’s sister, Rosalia. There is an immedi-ate empathy between young Eva Teresa and Philip, but this is halted by the Lucas family’s sudden move to Brazil. This obvi-ously kills the relationship between Philip and Rosalia and prevents Philip from con-tinuing his friendship with Rosalia’s young-er sister.

During the years, through pictures and videos that the two friends exchange, Phil-ip comes to realize the nature of his feel-ings for Eva Teresa and decides to travel to Brazil to find her. But the true reunion only happens in Portugal, in Sintra, and the beginning of their romance will often be interrupted by unpredictable circum-stances between the comedic and the mysterious. Only in the last few pages will the readers get to discover the outcome of a story filled with surprises.

CRÓNICA DOS BONS MALANDROSChronicle of the good scoundrelsMário Zambujal

DAMAS DE ESPADAS Queen of spadesMário Zambujal

CAFUNÉCafunéMário Zambujal

P U B L I S H E R : Clube do AutorL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 148R I G H T S : WorldS O L D T O : Catalonia (Alreves)

P U B L I S H E R : Clube do AutorL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 220R I G H T S : World

P U B L I S H E R : Clube do AutorL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 244R I G H T S : World

“The movie based on the book was directed by Fernando Lopes”

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A L E X A N D R A L U C A S C O E L H OAlexandra Lucas Coelho, born in 1967, studied theatre at the I.F.I.C.T. and then graduated

in Communication Science at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal). She worked for 10 years in broadcasting and she still collaborates with the national radio, RTP. Since 1998 she has been a journalist for the daily national newspaper Publico and has travelled the Middle East and Central Asia many times, living for 6 months in Jerusalem as foreign correspondent. She has won journalism awards from the Clube Português de Imprensa and Casa da Imprensa and the Grande Prémio Gazeta 2005.

TAHIR- OS DIAS DA REVOLUÇÃO TAHIR- Os Dias da Revolução

The author was in Tahir square, she slept there and from there saw Hasni Mubarak falling from power and the whole country celebrating.

This book is not a reportage, is the un-published account of a day when a coun-try tried to change its own destiny and the whole world supported its revolutionary spirit.

E A NOITE RODA And the night passes

And the night passes tells the story of Ana and Léon, a Catalan and a Belgian who meet in Jerusalem and over a period of two years, live a love story that stretch-es over three continents, from the Middle East to the USA, passing through Europe.

VIVA MEXICO Viva Mexico

It’s an account of the 3 weeks spent by the journalist in Mexico. A country where the horrors of Ciudad Juárez and the vi-olence of narco-traffickers can be found side by side with the amazing immensity of Mexico City, with its murals painted by Die-go Rivera and the blue houses described by Frida Kahlo.

TAHIR- Os Dias da Revolução Tahir- The days of the revolutionAlexandra Lucas Coelho

VIVA MEXICO Viva MexicoAlexandra Lucas Coelho E A NOITE RODA

And the night passesAlexandra Lucas Coelho

P U B L I S H E R : Tinta da ChinaL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 144R I G H T S : Worldwide

P U B L I S H E R : Tinta da ChinaL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2010P A G E S : 369R I G H T S : WorldwideS O L D T O : Mexico

P U B L I S H E R : Tinta da ChinaL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 248R I G H T S : Worldwide

“The subtle lyricism of her sophisticated and elegant language, already be-longs to a great writer.”

José Mário Silva, literary critic, Expresso

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V I R G Í L I O F E R R E I R A Vergílio Ferreira (1916-1997) is one of the great writers in the Portuguese language of the last century.

When his work was first translated into French by Gallimard and Métailié, reviewers compared him to Herman Hesse. As a teenager, he studied in a seminary and later attended the University of Coimbra. His experiences in the seminary are related in his most famous work Manhã Submersa (Misty Morning), published in 1953 and made into a film in 1980 (which was also shown at the Barbican’s ‘Second UK Portuguese Film Festival’ in 2011). He worked most of his life as a teacher in several places around Portugal and received various prestigious awards such as the Femina Prize in France (1990), the Europália Prize (1991), and the Camões Prize (1992).

APARIÇÃOApparition

Apparition was first published in Portu-gal in 1959, marking the beginning of Vir-gilio Ferreira’s fame in his country.

The story is set in a small town south of Lisbon, in the plains stretching over the Tagus river. The story’s rhythm is set by the school year and the seasons. The protag-onist, young professor Alberto Soares, ar-rives in Évora, Alentejo, on his first assign-ment at the local high school. He slowly comes into contact with the rigid society of the province by meeting the family of Dr. Moura, an old friend of his father. From this moment Ferreira builds a story that can hardly be forgotten, and confirms the suc-cess on the international scene of a book that is considered, together with Os Maias by Eça de Queirós and Memorial do Con-vento by José Saramago, to be one of the 10 most important Portuguese novels.

MANHÃ SUBMERSA

EM NOME DA TERRA

Misty morning

In the name of the Earth

This is the autobiographical tale of a young man studying to become a priest, who goes through a process of self-awakening that even-tually will question his faith and lead him to go out of the seminary and into the world. Set be-tween the austerities of the house of Ms. Este-fania, the temptations lying in his native village in the mountains of Portugal, and the silence of the walls of the seminary, the story unfolds around the experiences and feelings that the young seminarist is going through during his jour-ney. Amid the darkness, sadness and hardness of the seminary, the protagonist discovers the world around him: the repressive education, the poverty of the land, social inequalities, physical desire, the camaraderie, friendship and, finally, love.

The book, originally published in 1991 by Bertrand, is one of Ferreira’s last and most accomplished novels, where he ex-plores themes of love, loss, and old age. Written as a letter to his dead wife, Móni-ca, its main character is a retired judge living at a rest home. Despite the atmos-phere of decrepitude surrounding him, the old judge clings on to life; he writes to his dead wife, interspersing passionate mem-ories of their life together with present re-flections on his failing body and episodes at the rest home where his children have left him to ‘slowly rot’.

APARIÇÃO ApparitionVirgílio Ferreira

MANHÃ SUBMERSA Misty morningVirgílio Ferreira

EM NOME DA TERRA In the name of the EarthVirgílio Ferreira

P U B L I S H E R : QuetzalL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 192R I G H T S : World ex Brazil and SpainS O L D T O : France (La Différence)

P U B L I S H E R : QuetzalL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 272S A M P L E : EnglishR I G H T S : World ex Brazil and SpainS O L D T O : Spain (Acantilado) and France (Gallimard)

P U B L I S H E R : QuetzalL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2009P A G E S : 276R I G H T S : World ex BrasilS A M P L E : EnglishS O L D T O : France (Métailié), Italy (Besa), Spain (Cátedra), Russia, Poland

WINNER OF THE PRIX FEMINA 1990

The movie directed by Lauro António, was nom-inated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy

Awards in 1981.

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A Q U I L I N O R I B E I R OAquilino Ribeiro (1885-1963) Praised by critics and readers, he is considered as one of the great

Portuguese novelists of the 20th century. Among his notable books are Jardim das Tormentas (col-lection of short stories), A Casa Grande de Romarigães (his most famous work) and Quando os lobos uivam (about the opposition to dictatorship). He was nominated for the Nobel Literature Prize in 1960 and lived in Paris and London. He was involved in the opposition to António de Oliveira Salazar and the Estado Novo, whose government tried to censor or ban several of his books.

CINCO REIS DE GENTE Little scrap of a man

The book, first published in 1948, chronicles in first person the life of the author as a child with his family in a northern re-gion of Portugal. Many are the characters that fill this book: Aunt Custodia, whose contagious niceness could charm an-ybody even though her looks were never attractive; the dog Barzabú, loyal companion of adventures; the father of the narrator, thanks to whom we have a glimpse of how political campaigns were carried out in small villages; Ms. Teolinda, the teacher constantly fighting to teach her pupils how to read in a time when the common idea was that school was only good for the rich because the poor were too busy working; Maria Loia, who breaks the heart of the young narrator; and finally the bear Mariana, main attraction of a circus of gypsies visiting the village, always sad and tied up but able to do the most amazing tricks. Through hilarious adventures in the countryside and the descriptions of the complex (from the point of view of a child) relations between members of the same family, the author gives us a sharp insight into the social dynamics of life in a small village in the mid 20th century, keeping as background local folklore and beliefs, and shows us a simple society who believed in values that have long been forgotten.

P U B L I S H E R : BertrandL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 1985P A G E S : 212R I G H T S : World ex Brazil

CINCO REIS DE GENTE Little scrap of a manAquilino Ribeiro

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Winner of the Brazilian Academy of Letters Novel Award in 2010 and second place in the Brazilian National Library and Portugal

Telecom.

WINNER OF THE JABUTI PRIZE IN 1996Finalist at the Zaffari & Bordon, Portugal

Telecom e Jabuti Prize in 2005

R O D R I G O L A C E R D ARodrigo Lacerda (Rio de Janeiro, 1969) is a writer, editor, translator and historian. He has worked in pub-

lishing for many years and won several translation awards for his translations from French. He is a professor of Literary Theory and History of Literature in São Paulo. His books have been widely acclaimed by critics. He also published a novel for young adults, O fazedor de velhos (2008), that won the Prize for Best Children’s Book from the Biblioteca Nacional, a Jabuti Prize and the FNLIJ Award.

VISTA DO RIO Image of Rio

The book chronicles the friendship between Marco Aurélio and Virgílio: their growing up in disrupted families of the up-per middle class in Estrela de Ipanema, a building in Rio which is a landmark of modernist architecture, and their subse-quent maturity which leads the friends to gradually grow apart. One marries, has a daughter, divorces and lives a bureau-cratic and ordinary life. The other be-comes a well-known artist, rich and full of enthusiasm. In the 90’s, the friends meet again. One of them has a fatal disease, and asks the other to stay with him in the hospital, for a last hope treatment. The gap between modern architecture and the reality of the country, the city of Rio de Janeiro and its contradictions, are some of the themes that accompany the dramas experienced by the characters.

O MISTÉRIO DO LEÃO RAMPANTEThe mystery of the rampant lionForeword by João Ubaldo Ribeiro

England, 17th century. A spell prevents a young member of the landed gentry from conceiving an heir. She tries in vain to get rid of the spell until one day a witch dis-covers the source of the spell: the coat of King Henry V. Following this track, the young aristocrat and her entire family, including her husband, decide to travel to London, the heart of the British Renaissance. There, during the staging of Shakespeare’s Henry V, the young lady gets to meet the play-wright, William Shakespeare, and, through the magical power of the theatre, all their beliefs on people and society are forever changed.

“I use the word ‘talent’ parsimoniously, and so I can fairly say that Rodrigo Lacerda has a great deal of talent. The Mystery of the Ram-

pant Lion is an extraordinary exercise in literary sensitivity, and its author’s control over his prose

is of a rare order.”

João Ubaldo Ribeiro

OUTRA VIDA Another life

7:15 a.m. A man, a woman and their 5 year old daughter are waiting to board the bus that will take them back to the small seaside town where they came from. With this journey, the husband hopes to start a new life after the time spent in the big cruel city. They ran away from the capital chased by the ghosts of the past, in the attempt to put back together the crumbles of their own common project.

VISTA DO RIOImage of RioRodrigo Lacerda

O MISTÉRIO DO LEÃO RAMPANTEThe mystery of the rampant lionRodrigo Lacerda

OUTRA VIDA Another lifeRodrigo Lacerda

P U B L I S H E R : Cosac & NaifyL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2004P A G E S : 199S A M P L E : E n g l is hR I G H T S : Worldwide

P U B L I S H E R : Ateliê EditorialL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2006P A G E S : 158R I G H T S : WorldS O L D T O : I t a l y ( Fan uc c i )English translation available

P U B L I S H E R : AlfaguaraL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2009P A G E S : 184R I G H T S : WorldS O L D T O : Spain (Libros de Pizarra) and Portugal (Quetzal)French translation available

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“A book of guns and roses, which deserves to be read and acclaimed.”

Virgílio Moretzsohn, O Globo

J O Ã O G I L B E R T O N O L L

João Gilberto Noll was born in Porto Alegre in 1946. He is the au-

thor of thirteen books, among them O cego e a dançarina (1980), A fúria do corpo (1981), Bandoleiros (1985), and Lorde (2012), all published by Record. He has won more than ten literary awards, including the Jabuti Prize in 1981, 1994, 1997, 2004, and 2005. His novel Harmada (Companhia das Letras, 1993) made Bravo! magazine’s list of 100 essential Brazilian books of all time. Noll has been published in Argentina, Eng-land, and Italy.

He has worked as a journalist at Folha da manhã and Última hora and as a contributor to the newspaper Correio braziliense.

LORDE AMORES EXILADOS Lord Loves in exile

Lorde tells the story of a fifty-year-old writer with seven pub-lished books and a single wish: to live beyond the pages of his works and free himself from his image as a writer. He lands in London at the invitation of an Englishman he doesn’t know, who sets him up in an apartment in Hackney, a neighbourhood of immigrants. When the stranger who extended the invitation dies, the Brazilian decides that he needs to be an English citizen himself. Following the literary tradition of Beckett and Musil, in this unsettling tale of lost identity the author brings the reader to a world where crime, aberration and oddity are not that un-common.

In this book (originally released in 1997 with the title Pedaço de santo), Fábio and Catarina are two Brazilians coming from totally different regions, Bahia de Lázaro and Florianópolis, who are forced to leave the country in the years of military govern-ment and move to France, only to share a rootless existence in exile with Muriel, a French woman who is living in a self-imposed exile from her own past.

P U B L I S H E R : FrancisL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2004P A G E S : 114R I G H T S : Europe, English LanguageS O L D T O : Argentina (Adriana Hidalgo Edit-ora)

P U B L I S H E R : RecordL A N G U A G E : PortugueseY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 240R I G H T S : Europe, English language

LORDELord

AMORES EXILADOSLoves in exile

João Gilberto Noll Godofredo de Oliveira Neto

G O D O F R E D OD E O L I V E I R A N E T O

Godofredo de Oliveira Neto, is a professor and an award-win-ning writer. Born in Blumenau, in

the Santa Catarina state, in 1951, he then moved to Rio and subsequently studied in France, at the Sorbonne. He teaches at the UFRJ in Rio and has written, among other works, O Bruxo do Contestado –according to the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, one of the ten most important works of 1996- and Menino oculto, which won a second place at the Jabuti Prize in 2006. All his books have reached notable success by both critics and the public and have been recommended read-ings in many universities.

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M A X B E S O R AMax Besora (1980, Barcelona) studied the trumpet at the Music Conservatory of Barcelona. He

worked in a warehouse, a videogame shop, as a hotel receptionist and even sold sport articles, and herbal products. For the past three years he has been working as a teacher of Catalan and Castillian for foreigners. In 2008 he won the Prize Benet Ribas for poetry for L’espectre elec-tromagnètic and used the money to pay for his university course.

VULCANOVolcano

The village of San Pancraci del Paradís, situated on the slopes of a volcano, had to be evacuated. A man with a hal-lucinating mind decides to stay in the village and observe the slow destruction of everything surrounding him and, ul-timately, is able to stare in front of his naked soul. Delirium, loneliness, disillusion, chaos and a warm hope of redemption accompany the protagonist on his descent to hell.

Max Besora’s book, clearly influenced by the work of Mal-colm Lowry, is a disturbing and uncompromising piece of lit-erature on the battle between reason and madness, between word and chaos. A frightening look into the end of the world.

The author creates a contemporary hero who faces the difficulties of everyday life with humour and irreverent apa-thy, projecting on the reader the shadow of a confused and frantic mind. Volcano, following the tradition of the genre, can be read as a modern katabasis, where hell ceases to be a geographical space and turns into a product of one’s own subjectivity.

“Vulcano is a sincere and provoking book, a fast read that doesn’t want to offer great revelations but only a good dose of refreshing sarcasm that gives some oxygen in a scene cur-

rently dominated by mediatic literature.”

Alex Reig, Revista de Letras

P U B L I S H E R : LaBreu EdicionsL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 110S A M P L E : EnglishR I G H T S : WorldSpanish version available

VULCANOVolcanoMax Besora

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“An exaltation of friendship hiding behind a curtain of intelli-gent and lighthearted humour, where contingencies are what

trigger the action and science fiction is only an excuse to describe the reality of everyday that, although full of compli-

cations, has to keep going.”

Cristina Carbonell, El Diario

V I C T O R N U B L A

Victor Nubla (1956, Barcelona), is a musician and a writer. He has

published many non-fiction books, short stories, poems and opinion columns in several newspapers and magazines. He is a composer of music for movies and theatres. El regal de Gliese is his first novel.

EL REGAL DE GLIESE L’ENTREPÀGliese’s gift Sandwich

During a warm August night in the neighbourhood of Car-mel, the writer Sebastià Janowsky finds the dead body of one of the guests of a private party he was attending. After a few minutes Sebastià is unconscious. He wakes up in an unknown apartment next to the dead body. His documents are missing and a bundle of notes have been placed in his pocket. This is the beginning of El regal de Gliese, a novel, suspended be-tween crime and science fiction, populated by eccentric artists and amateur detectives.

Recommended to those interested in intergalactic con-spiracies, experimental drugs bringing unexpected effects, the interior monologues of a Belgian Sheppard and the uncertain fate of a rumba singer. The book is a perfect mix of Philip K. Dick and Mort & Phil: only taking place during a festival in the bohe-mian area of Gracia, in Barcelona.

A 80 m2 bar in the center of Manresa, a boring job prepar-ing sandwiches, an extraordinary woman, Elionor, with whom to share a normal life and a heavenly routine, three normal children and the usual customers. This is all the protagonist, a man in his sixties who had never set foot outside Catalonia, ever had.

Elionor, a rather restless and unpredictable woman with a passion for giving extravagant gifts, one day decides to bring two dueling pistols to her husband. He then hides them in his sandwich bar.

The years pass quietly and in a state of relative happiness, the children finally become independent, and the couple find themselves alone. On Friday evening he arrives home to a locked door, behind which there is no dinner ready on the ta-ble and, most of all, no more wife. She eventually comes back late at night to declare that her chance has finally come and that she will be a famous actress. After a couple of days she leaves a note and disappears.

Abandoned, betrayed and confused, he starts spending all his time in his sandwich bar working on a recipe to make the best sandwiches in Catalonia.

A story about the fragility and unpredictability of human relationships, the love for small things and how determination can be the key to salvation.

P U B L I S H E R : Males HerbesL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 160R I G H T S : WorldSpanish version available

P U B L I S H E R : LaBreuL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 164R I G H T S : WorldEnglish and Spanish sample

EL REGAL DE GLIESEGliese’s gift

L’ENTREPÀSandwich

Victor Nubla Salvador Giralt

S A L V A D O R G I R A L T Salvador Giralt (Barcelona,

1954). He studied matemathics at the University of Barcelona and the-

atre at the Casona Academy directed by Fernando Grifell. Author of poetry and novels, in 2008 he won the Prize Punyal de Vic with the collection of poems Romanço de l’Ambros i del seu tros. President of the Association of Friends of the Mig-diada, he takes very seriously all matters concerning dreams, deep sleep and the dreamlike effects of modern literature.

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M A N E L D E L A R O S AManel de la Rosa (Barcelona, 1961) is a professor at the School of Writing of the Athenaeum of

Barcelona, where he currently teaches Narrative Techniques and Novel Writing. He combines writing and teaching with activities such as guitar luthier and developer of open source software. His writing is inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Italo Calvino, Gao Xingjian and Paul Theroux, and by visual works such as Richard Avedon’s portrait photography or the graphic novels of Peter Milligan.

CADA COLOR D’UN RIU A river has different colours

Alex and Minkara are two lonely children united by a spe-cial bond. One day a traumatic event (the accidental death of her parents and his father) will break their friendship and put an end to their childhood.

Ten years later, Alex had become a person who detached himself from any sort of emotions. Things change when he meets Sigurd, a sarcastic Danish guy, and Xenia, a deter-mined yet unpredictable girl. Meanwhile, Minkara reappears into Alex’s life thinking that maybe, now that they are adults, she could fix their relationship. Alex soon starts to have feel-ings for Minkara that he thought he could never experience and she feeds his hopes until it becomes clear that she’s de-voured by an old and poisonous obsession that threatens to destroy their lives.

The title refers to the different options we can choose in life and the fact that, although the events can influence our decisions, we always have a choice and each one of us can pick something different. An intimistic novel that drives the characters into the abyss that separates redemption from the dangerous attraction of death.

P U B L I S H E R : PeriscopiL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 248S A M P L E : S pan is hR I G H T S : World

CADA COLOR D’UN RIU A river has different coloursManel de la Rosa

“It’s worth diving in this river.”

Ricard Ruiz Garzón, El Pais

WINNER OF THE FNAC NEW TALENTS AWARD (2013)

“Cada color d’un riu is a book about feelings and emotions, which revolves around the inner

worlds of the characters.”

Cristina Carbonell, El diari de la cultura (El Diario)

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“Gratuitous violence, eroticism, moral fatigue, war against the empire of appearances, the silliness of many poets, the area of Raval in Barcelona, the shops of Pakistanis, the mediocrity of many characters around us: Romera’s literature is one of

denunciation.”

Jordi Llavina, writer, poet, literary critic.

“Marc Romera, the author of one of the best novels of the past couple of years: Mala Vida.”

Pere Guixà, author of No pots sentir-ho.

M A R C R O M E R A

Marc Romera (Barcelona, 1966) is a professor of Language and Lit-

erature and an editor. He has collaborated with several radio stations and worked as a literary critic for Quadern (El Pais). In 1986 he won the poetry prize Gabriel Ferrater.

MALA VIDA L’ENDEMÁ Bad life The day after

Mala vida is going to impress readers for its style, charac-ters, the city of Barcelona that is portrayed in the book, the story itself and, finally, for the shocking end. Marc Romera de-scribes three days in the life of H., a young man who is afraid of commitment and rejects any sort of involvement with both people and situations. His failure as a painter is almost a met-aphor for the failure of his whole existence. It certainly evokes the failure of an entire generation of aimless and disillusioned individuals, cradled in a life that is so easy on them that it risks becoming boring. Narrated with an ironic tone, it is the tale of a generation whose only motivation in life is partying, taking pills, drinking, having sex and diving into all sorts of extreme ex-periences. A funny and caustic novel, deeply literary, that re-veals Marc Romera as one of the most promising and personal voices of contemporary Catalan literature.

Rai, Max and Charlie are the members of the Les Roques, the most famous rock group in the country, with thirty years of history and over six million records sold. Since they began play-ing together in high school they have managed to stay on top of the charts thanks to their talent and cool aggressive attitude. They also have the support of their families: Maria, mother of Max, and Karen, mother of Charlie, are the founding partners of Olympus Productions, the agents for the band. The date of their latest concert at the Olympic Stadium is fast approaching and the Rai, the group leader, has disappeared. Meanwhile his manager is too busy playing golf with his wife and Carmen, an attractive lady who caught his attention.

L’Endemá is a fast paced novel that touches a range of subjects like family, friendship, success and loyalty. As David Bowie would say, “Why would I want TV, if I have the T. Rex?”. Rock’n’roll.

P U B L I S H E R : Angle EditorialL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2004P A G E S : 160R I G H T S : World

P U B L I S H E R : PeriscopiL A N G U A G E : CatalanY E A R : 2013P A G E S : 200R I G H T S : World

MALA VIDA Bad life

L’ENDEMÁThe day after

Marc Romera Tuli Márquez

T U L I M Á R Q U E Z Tuli Márquez (Barcelona, 1962)

graduated in 1985 in Journalism at the Universitat Autónoma of Barce-

lona. He then started to work for television, doing trailers for TV shows, TV movies and programmes. Now he is dedicating all his time to writing. L’Endemá is his first novel.

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A L E J A N D R O J O D O R O W S K IAlejandro Jodorowsky (1930, Chile), is the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. From an early age

he became interested in mime and theater and at the age of 23 he left for Paris, where he has lived ever since. A friend and companion of Fernando Arrabal and Roland Topor, he founded the Panic movement and has directed several ‘cult’ films including Holy Mountain, El Topo and Santa Sangre (all of them now released on DVD by Abcko Films, New York). Mime artist, specialist in the art of tarots and prolific author, he has written novels, poetry, short stories, essays and over thirty successful comic books, working with such highly regarded comic book artists as Moebius and Bess. Donde mejor canta un pájaro, El niño del jueves negro and Albina y los hombres perro are among his best-known novels (sold in France, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands and Russia). Influenced by his fascination with the tarot, his years spent working in theatre and by his experiences of psychoanalysis (he himself underwent analysis with Erich Fromm), he has also created his own particular brand of therapeutic practice - a mixture of modern psychotherapy and shamanism which he first presented in his book: Psicomagia: El Teatro de la curación. Una terapia pánica, allegedly providing the reader with remedies to help mend ‘flawed lives’.

Teresa, the grandmother of the narrator, got angry at God and at those who had faith in him after the terrifying flood of the river Dniepr that killed her favorite son. The misfortunate had pushed a cabinet into the courtyard and he had climbed on top of it, but due to its weight (it contained 37 tractates of the Talmud) it didn’t float.

This is how the incredible story of a Chilean family of Ukrainian origins begins, a story filled with mythical and real ancestors, were readers are taken travelling through time to unveil the most comic and scandalous stories in a bizarre world inhabited by ancestors always covered in bees, women who have a special connection with wolves, snake charmers and even anarchist attackers.

First published in 1992, this visionary family saga owes its title to Jean Cocteau’s ingenious reflection: “A bird sings best on its family tree”. This book, where heroism and legend are observed through the prism of caricature and parody, is the definitive demonstration that, for extraordinary personalities like Jodorowsky, talent seethes in overwhelming density when compared to the number of authors who fail in their attempt to transmit their interest in their roots to the reader.

A great tale, written by a great writer that brings together the grace and poetry of yiddish stories with the magical realism typical of Latin America literature to create the perfect semblance for a man’s search of his roots.

DONDE MEJOR CANTA UN PÁJARO Where a bird sings better

P U B L I S H E R : SiruelaL A N G U A G E : SpanishY E A R : 2002P A G E S : 318English language rights represented on behalf of Casanovas & LynchS O L D T O : Chile (Hachette); Mexico (Grijalbo); Spain (Editorial Seix Barral; Siruela); Portugal (Oficina do Livro); Argentina (Editorial Planeta); Italy (Feltrinelli); France (Metailié); Ger-many (Suhrkamp); Netherlands (Arena); Brazil (Planeta Brazil)

DONDE MEJOR CANTA UN PÁJARO Where a bird sings betterAlejandro Jodorowsky

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H E R N Á N C A S T E L L A N O G I R Ó N

Hernán Castellano Girón (1937, Coquimbo) studied Chemistry and

Pharmacy in Santiago. He lived many years in Italy and in the USA, where he completed a Ph.D. in Hispano-American litera-ture at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is a writer of prose and poetry and a visual artist who has exhibited in Europe, the USA and Chile. He won several prizes for his short stories, such as first place in the short stories category of the competition run by the magazine Hispamérica (1978, jury composed of: Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos) and first place for short stories from the Association of Chileans of San Francisco (1993). He was also Associate Professor and subsequently Professor Emeritus of His-pano-American literature at the California Polytechnic Universi-ty. He’s been living in Isla Negra (Chile), since 2008.

LLAMARADAS DE NAFTA

EN VOZ BAJA

Flares of naphta

Whispering

The publication of Llamaradas de Nafta, was meant to help the circulation of the prose of Castellano Girón in Latin America after a long self imposed exile in the USA and Italy. This collec-tion contains 9 previously published short stories (mainly written during the 60s), among which: La feria mental, Nosferatu, Pe-numbra de la paloma; and two unpublished ones: Transylvania Boogie and LLamaradas de nafta.

The tale Nosferatu was written in 1971 during the govern-ment of Unidad Popular, and is based on a ‘cult’ movie direct-ed by Castellano Girón, where an extraterrestrial vampire lands on the outside of a house and starts wandering the streets of a dreamlike city, Santiago, which is swallowed by the urgency of the political situation. All the stories in this collection are a good representation of Latin American surrealism, where reality and imagination live side by side; bringing daring and often raving results that could almost fall into the genre of science fiction.

Em voz baja was one of the first novels to be published in Chile about the military dictatorship of Pinochet (started in 1970) that was written by someone from ‘the post-dictatorship generation’. It tells the story of Amanda, a girl who is trying to find out what happened to her father and, to do that, goes back to her childhood in her memories, in the attempt to find in her past a clue that might help her.

The main themes of the story are: violence and memory. Vi-olence in terms of political violence; represented by the deten-tion and exile of the father and the disappearance and death of the uncle, as well as the violence constituted by forced si-lence. As suggested by the title, the novel is a lot about the ‘untold’, the lies and the secrets, coming from the fear instilled in people during the dictatorship, that bit by bit destroy the foundation of family relations. The book explores the strategies employed by the characters (two generations of women) to face violence and the demons of their pasts, and the resulting implications on the way they see themselves as women.

P U B L I S H E R : Editorial CunetaL A N G U A G E : SpanishY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 124R I G H T S : World

P U B L I S H E R : Editorial CunetaL A N G U A G E : SpanishY E A R : 2013P A G E S : 172R I G H T S : WorldThis book is a revised version of the first edition, published in 1996.

LLAMARADAS DE NAFTA Flares of naphta

EN VOZ BAJAWhispering

Hernán Castellano Girón Alejandra Costamagna

A L E J A N D R A C O S T A M A G N A

Alejandra Costamagna (1970, San-tiago) is a writer and journalist with an MA in Literature. With the collection of short stories Bad Nights (2000), Last Fires

(2005) and Domestic Animals (2011), the compilation of her work as a journalist Pedestrian Crossing (2012) and her five novels, Costamagna has become one of the most solid voices of today’s Chilean fiction, praised by the likes of Roberto Bolano. In 2003 she took part in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, in 2006 she won the Altazor Award, and in 2008 she received the German Anna Seghers Award for the best Latin-American author of the year.

WINNER OF THE GABRIELA MISTRAL LITERARY GAMES AWARD

“Whispering and Citizen in Retirement are achievements in themselves, but above all they are the firmest promise of a

literature than renounces nothing.” Roberto Bolaño

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One of the most well known but least read novels of Argentinean literature, when it first came out in 1968, all four re-prints sold out within two months (over 15.000 copies) before the book was censored for being against public morality and the author was sent to prison. The book has been a legend ever since, although only a few copies survived the censorship and made it through the past decades.

It describes the journey of a young boy from Junin to Buenos Aires: the discovery of the big city, his entering the working world and, ultimately, the realization that his sexual desires where becoming adult necessities. It’s a coming-of-age novel, set between two very different places; a town in the countryside and the frightening metropolis, where at the end the action shifts back to where it all started, showing a history that runs after itself in a circle broken only by the death of the father of the narrator, which also marks the end of the novel. The author uses a cinematic type of narrative and plays on a simple and colloquial language mixed with certain literary elements to create a unique and experimental voice destined to lead the way of a new generation of vanguardists.

N A N I N AG e r m á n G a r c í a

F C E / L an g u a ge : S pan is h / Year : 2 0 1 2 / P a ges : 3 0 4 / R i g ht s : Wo r l d

S E R I E D E L R E C I E N V E N I D O

E D I T E D B Y R I C A R D O P I G L I A

With this series, Argentina’s foremost literary figure Ricardo Piglia presents readers with a new canon of Argentina’s literary vanguard, a sort of ‘anti-canon’. Under Piglia’s supervi-sion, Fondo de Cultura Económica is re-publishing some titles, written by important writers,

that for different reasons during the years had fallen under the radar and had been forgot-ten. These books from the past were ahead of their time, and it is still possible to find in them

signs of the present times. The name of the series is an homage to the Argentinean writer and mentor of Jorge Luis Borges, Macedonio Fernández. All books have an introduction by

Ricardo Piglia.

N a n i n a

Germán García (Junin, 1944) is an Argentinean writer and psychoanalyst. In 1973 he founded, together with Osvaldo Lamborghini and Luis Gusmán, the Revista Literal. He was part of the group that helped Oscar Masotta start the Freudian School of Buenos Aires and, after some years spent in Barcelona, returned to Buenos Aires in 1985 to found the Biblioteca Internacional de Psicoanálisis (BIP) and the magazine Descartes. In 2007 he was honoured by the city of Buenos Aires for his contribution to national culture.

BIO

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Originally published in 1981 as En breve cárcel, this is the first novel of the Argentinian scholar-critic Sylvia Mol-loy. Innovative in its treatment of women’s relationships and in its assertion of a woman’s right to author her own text, the novel has won wide approval in Latin America and the United States.

The novel centers around a woman writing in a small room. As she writes, remembering a past relationship with a girl called Vera, and anticipating a future one, the room becomes a repository for nostalgia, violence, and desire, a space in which writing and remembering become life-sustaining ceremonies. The narrator reflects on the power of love to both shelter and destroy. She meditates on the act of writing, specifically on writing as a woman, in a voice that goes against the grain of established, canonical voices.

Latin American male writers are prone to self-por-trayal in their texts. En breve cárcel is one of the few novels by Latin American women that successfully use this technique to open new windows on women’s ex-periences.

A romantic novel about an on and off relationship, a real homage to the seductive song of the sirens and an account of the power of attraction of women. The narrator is playing a sort of third wheel, always present in spirit but absent in the reality of the story, observing an intricate web of misunderstandings and quick passions.

Minga! presents a myriad of views that a narrator can adopt towards the intrigue of the plot. The novel-ist analyzes, reasons, raves, is amazed, intercedes, and scares, and the brilliancy of the book also lies in his com-ments, error of judgment and changes of register.

A metaliterary novel written in a style that is fast, fun, inventive, lucid and bright.

FCE / Laguage: Spanish / Year: 2012 / Pages: 232 / Rights: World

FCE / Language: Spanish / Year: 2012 / Pages: 155 / Rights: World Sold to: USA (University of Texas Press; Polygon)

Jorge di Paola (Tandil, 1940-2007) was a writer and journal-ist. He wrote for Panorama, Confirmado and La Opinión, and was one of the founders of the magazine El Porteño. He wrote Hernán. Poema dramático en cinco cuadros, with a prologue by Witold Gombrowicz; the collections of short-stories: La virgin-idad es un tigre de papel (1974) and El arte del espectáculo (2001); and the espionage novel Moncada (2003), written with Roberto Jacoby. Minga! was published for the first time in 1987.

Sylvia Molloy (Buenos Aires, 1938) is an Argentine novelist and critic. She holds the Albert Schweitzer Chair in Humani-ties. She is one of the most recognized scholars of American literatures and has lectured at several major universities such as Princeton, Yale and Vassar College. She has been a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She has served as President of the Modern Language Association of America and of the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana and holds an hon-orary degree in humanities from Tulane University.

BIO

BIO

E N B R E V E C Á R C E L M I N G A !S y l v i a M o l l o y J o r g e d i P a o l a

N o w a y !C e r t i f i c a t e o f a b s e n c e

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/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / A R G E N T I N A

FCE / Language: Spanish / Year: 2012 / Pages: 128 / Rights: World

FCE / Language: Spanish / Year: 2012 / Pages: 155/ Rights: World

THE BOOK WAS A FINALIST AT THE PREMIO PLANETA BIBLIOTECA DEL SUR IN 1995.

A collection of short stories that, besides being a lit-eray milestone, have the power to build an independ-ent universe. The stories are set during the 50s and 60s: we have the cigarettes Saratoga, the magazine Atlan-tide, the songs of Paul Anka and Harry Belafonte, and rock’n’roll making its first appearance during Saturday night dances.

Only one of these stories, Palma, is set in a different time (a decade later) and in a different place (a Euro-pean city). It is the story of a woman constantly going back in her memory to her childhood, and the seaside location that has deeply marked her perception of life.

The different plots of each story connect with one another, and the descriptions of objects and charac-ters gives even more unity to the collection. Imagina-tive, ruthless, sometimes scathing, the author seems to find refuge in the language belonging to a world when everything else is collapsing around him.

A horror story that subverts the logic of the genre, because terror is in this case about the characters and not instrumental to the purposes of storytelling. El mal minor is not a horror story but a tale of terror. Some memorable characters of the novel are moving in a frightening world, seeing what others cannot see and paying the price of their grim vision.

The action takes place in San Telmo and affects primarily two characters: the first is Inés Gaos, who just moved into an apartment in which she can clearly feel an alien presence. Due to her cocaine habit, at the beginning she dismiss these strange feelings and attributes them to the substance abuse, but when the daily horrors starts to multiply she understand that it’s something different. The sudden death of her partner during a trip to Cuba reinforces her suspicions.

The second character is Nelson Floreal, a Uruguay-an tarot specialist who’s taking care of his dying moth-er. She wants to appoint him her successor in the task of caring for the twelve archons of the”Circle” that protects the universe of dreams. The old woman knows that the circle can crack and awful creatures can es-cape and threaten the world, transforming the lives of its inhabitants into real nightmares. Warned by his mother about the imminent danger, Nelson contacts Inés to help him find the fugitives and try to send them back where they belong.

C. E. Feiling (Santa Fe, 1961-1997) earn a degree at the Uni-versity of Buenos Aires, and spent some time teaching at uni-versity in Argentina and abroad. He taught Latin and Linguistics at the UBA, Philosophy at the University of Lomas de Zamora and San Andrés, and American Literature at the University of Nottingham (England). In 1990, he left academia to devote himself to literature and cultural reporting. He has published, among others, El agua electrizada, Un poeta nacional and Amor a Roma (poems). El mal menor, his third novel, was a finalist at the Premio Planeta Biblioteca del Sur 1995. He died in Buenos Aires in 1997 leaving his fourth novel unfinished.

Ana Basualdo was born in Buenos Aires and has been living in Barcelona for more than thirty years. She worked as a jour-nalist for the weekly Panorama and, in Spain, for the magazines Triunfo, Destino, El Viejo Topo, Vogue, and on El País and La Vanguardia. Oldsmobile 1962 was first published in 1985.

BIO

BIO

O L D S M O B I L E 1 9 6 2 E L M A L M E N O R A n a B a s u a l d o C . E . F e i l i n g

T h e l e a s t o f e v i lO l d s m o b i l e 1 9 6 2

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N I C O L Á S C A S U L L ONicolás Casullo (Buenos Aires, 1944-2008) was a philosopher, writer and essayist. In 1968 he par-

ticipated in the French May. A Peronist militant, he went into exile in 1974. He studied in Cuba and Venezuela before moving to Mexico. He was Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and consultant for the University of Paris. He went back to Argentina in 1983 and found-ed the magazine, Pensamiento de los confines with Alejandro Kaufman, Matías Bruera, Ricardo Forster and Gregorio Kaminsky, founded the magazine, Pensamientodelosconfines. In 2004 he won the Konex Prize for Philosophical Essays. He was one of the main figures of the Espacio Carta Abierta, a group of Argentinean intellectuals.

ORIFICIO Orificio

Buenos Aires, 2117. After a cataclysm that cannot be named, the city appears a wasteland where neighborhoods and streets seem somehow familiar, although now inhabited by mystical or alchemical tribes. The main character, Orificio (which literally means ‘Hole’- referring to the hole of a bullet in the body of the protagonist but also evoking something empty that needs to be filled) is a ‘beast’ who has already killed many people: a man who has lost the real sense of his presence in the world. He’s a hunter whose mission is to care for the neigh-borhood of the Ancestors and, in this sense, operates as an avenging angel in the middle of a city in free fall where incest, patricide and vandalism are the norm. Following the indication of the oracle of El Vigia, Orificio decides to go to the palace of the leader of the Philosophical Lovers, Lucas Zampino, who is hiding the 32 books of the library of the Savage Horde of Bar-racas because “it is pointless to always remember the past”.

In one passage , one of the characters mentions the disap-pointment the country suffered under the government of “an old general in exile, who talked about Swedish and German social democracy”, ending his thought with a melancholic “At the end here we are: whether it is because of fate or irony.”. This is what the novel is about: we can create imaginary worlds and escape the present, obsessing about the past, but at the end we are a product of present times and taking action is the only way forward.

P U B L I S H E R : Astier LibrosL A N G U A G E : SpanishY E A R : 2011P A G E S : 202R I G H T S : World

ORIFICIO OrificioNicolás Casullo

“Popular genres (especially detective stories and science fiction) have refreshed political literature. In fact, these two genres are ones

that have explored the most in the criticism of capitalism. Written in the 90s, Casullo’s novel is an example of the great tradition of storytelling: located in a future Buenos Aires, the novel antic-ipates and explores the apocalyptic imagery of the social crisis. Fast paced and told in a rough

style, Orificio reminds of the conspiracies of Roberto Arlt and the hopeless utopia of Walter

Benjamin.”

Ricardo Piglia

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/ / / / / / / / / / / / Q U E B E C A N D C A N A D A

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Patrice Lessard was born in Louiseville, Quebec in 1971. Le sermon aux poissons, his first novel, was one of the finalists at the Ringuet Prize in 2012. He currently lives between France, Portugal and Italy. He’s now working on his next book, set in Italy.

“One of the big surprises of this literary season. Patrice Lessard alternates daytime and nighttime scenes with rare

virtuosity to blur the line between the present and the past.”

Martine Desjardins, L’Actualité

Antoine is a quebecois who decides to go on holiday in Lisbon. There, he loses his mobile phone during a night spent drinking in the bars of a maze-like Lisbon. The book chronicles two days in the life of Antoine: the loss of the phone and the investigation run by the protagonist to find it.

P A T R I C E L E S S A R D

NINANina

A few years ago, Antoine decided to move from Quebec to Portugal. He has now been missing for one year. His broth-er, Vincent, decides to go to Lisbon with his girlfriend Nina, who speaks Portuguese, to find him. Nina knows the city very well but the search of Antoine soon proves to be more dif-ficult than predicted. There are almost no leads. One day, they accidentally run into Gill, a private detective, who seems confident in his ability to help them. The detective, who’s far from rolling in money, had previously been hired by a gang of small local thugs to recover a gun that had been lost during a robbery. The routes of the three seem to be all leading in the same direction and Vincent and Nina will soon be dragged by Gill in a complicated maze of intrigues, strange encounters and misleading tracks.

Divided in two parts, one told by an external narrator and another in first person, Nina follow the narrative tradition of Nabokov’s The real life of Sebastian Knight. Through a careful-ly planned structure, where conflicting clues are suggested along the story, the book keeps the reader in a constant state of uncertainty, where the line between truth and lie is com-pletely blurred and, maybe, that is precisely what makes the story credible.

P U B L I S H E R : HéliotropeL A N G U A G E : FrenchY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 397R I G H T S : World

NINA NinaPatrice Lessard


LE SERMON AUX POISONSLe sermon aux poisonsPatrice Lessard

LE SERMON AUX POISSONS

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Vu d’ici tout est petit was included in l’Actualité magazine’s list of

‘35 new voices shaking Quebec literature’.

“A mixture between Jack Kerouac’s On the road for the story and Michel Tremblay for the language (the use of slang), On

the road 132 is however a unique and easy read. [...]On the road 132, like its author, inspires curiosity for the taste of adventure and is a nice tribute, with its very direct descriptions

of reality, to the region of Quebec.”

Gabrielle Brassard-Lecours, Le Plateau-Culture

W I N N E R O F T H E Q U E B E C B O O K S E L L E R S ’ P R I Z E 2 0 1 0

N I C O L A S C H A L I F O U R

Nicolas Chalifour (Quebec City, 1970) has lived in Toronto,

Montreal and its suburbs. His second novel, Variétés Delphi, was published in 2012 by Héliotrope.

VU D’ICI TOUT EST PETIT SUR LA 132 Variétés Delphi On the road 132

A little creature (a sort of gnome) lurking in the shadows of a manor observes the lives of people inside: the kitchen staff, the butler, the waiters, the maids, the director and the clients. Each day, this very determined creature goes into the building to rummage through the rooms and cellars, discovering a new world.

He examines the world of the manor in great detail, seeing the ridiculousness of rich people and their perversity.

Through the fluid and wriggling rhythm of the narrative, told from the perspective of a small creature who transforms into an adventurous knight after dark (to defend the honour of his favourite waitress), Chalifour shows us a surprising angle on the microcosm of the manor.

Theo works in advertising. One day the world he is so used to, starts to feel too tight. He leaves everything and moves to a small cottage in Trois-Pistoles, 500 km from Montreal. A novel of initiation but at the same time a novel of atmosphere and characters, Sur la 132 describes the universe where Theo tries to re-invent himself, the great spaces of Quebec and its wild nature, populated by unique characters that help keep up the incredible rhythm of this road trip. This book is a story about dif-ferent generations of people and social realities in a fantastic region that is often left unexplored by both tourists and locals.



VU D’ICI TOUT EST PETIT SUR LA 132One the road 132

Nicolas Chalifour Gabriel Anctil

G A B R I E L A N C T I LGabriel Anctil (Montreal, 1979)

is a guy who, one day, decided to quit his job and move to Bas-du-

Fleuve, in Quebec. Sur la 132 is his first novel.

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N E L L Y A R C A NNelly Arcan (Lac Mégantic, 1973-Montreal, 2009). Her first novel Putain (Éditions Du Seuil,

2003), drawing on her experience working in the sex trade in Montreal, caused a sensation and enjoyed immediate critical and media success. It was a finalist for both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina, two of France’s most prestigious literary awards. The two novels that followed, Folle (Seuil, 2004), and À ciel ouvert (Seuil, 2007), established her as a literary star in Quebec and France. She is also the author of an illustrated book on the beauty myth for young girls, L’enfant dans le miroir (Marchand de Feuilles, 2007). Paradis, clef en main (Coups de Tête, 2009) was her fourth novel and was completed just days before she committed suicide in 2009 at the age of thirty-six.

PARADIS, CLEF EM MAIN Exit

Somewhere in Montreal, in the not too distant future, an obscure company called ‘Paradis, clef en main’ offers cus-tom-designed suicides for its clients with one condition: their de-sire to die must be pure and absolute and this has to be tested though a series of inexplicable interviews. A child born of artifi-cial insemination, now in her early 30s, Antoinette Beauchamp has been paralyzed following a botched suicide attempt per-formed by the company. Confined to a hospital bed, she is cared for by her fashionista mom who visits every day bringing jugs of vodka and orange juice so her daughter can sink into oblivion at will. Meanwhile, she tells her story for posterity, every gesture followed by a surveillance camera her mother has set up in the hospital room.

While the mother loves her daughter resolutely, Antoinette loathes the woman who forced her into being and dreams of crushing her. Suicide is something of a family tradition. The narrator’s grandfather took his life in a conventional way for a psychologically coherent cause: grief. Her uncle Léon did it for more complex, possibly temperamental reasons, a sense that life was a prison sentence, and enlisted the services of ‘Paradis, clef en main’. Sensing a kindred spirit in the child Antoinette, he left her enough money to take the same road out should her desire for escape someday overcome the will to carry on.

This is where the novel finds its energy, as the helpless Antoi-nette is forced to cope with quest-like tribulations in her pursuit of death, taking the reader into the Kafkaesque world of the company and its bewildering cast of characters. Exit is at once a profound examination of what it is that drives someone to want to end their life, as well as how that urge can be turned on its head against all odds. Written with her signature brio and acerbic wit, Nelly Arcan’s last novel is a hymn to life.

P U B L I S H E R : Coups de TêteL A N G U A G E : FrenchY E A R : 2009P A G E S : 224R I G H T S : WorldS O L D T O : English for Canada (Anvil Press)

PARADIS, CLEF EM MAIN ExitNelly Arcan

“Dark, beautiful, poignant and clever, Arcan’s Exit is a powerful read.”

Lisa Foad, The Globe and Mail

“A powerful argument for suicide as a human right, Exit is also strangely life-affirming.”

Marianne Ackerman, Rover

Full English text available (translated by David Scott Hamilton)

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Dominic C. Iannuzzi is a Montreal writer and an unabashed news and history junkie. Born and raised in Montreal’s Italian north-end, he brings a unique perspective to the political and language debate that has raged in Quebec since the 1960s. D.C. Iannuzzi earned an MBA and a Bachelor of Engineering degree at Concordia University and, when he’s not contemplating the darkness that lurks in men’s souls, he earns his living as an Investment Advisor. City of Sinners is his first novel, and was officially launched at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival in May 2008.

Shortlisted for the F. G. Bressani Literary Prize (Vancouver 2012)

In this sequel to City of Sinners, D.C. Iannuzzi confirms his shameless devotion to the film noir genre, weaving a tale of cor-rosive greed, blind ambition and ruthless retribution. Julie Vad-nais, an attractive and determined young reporter, confronts the murky realms of municipal politics and organized crime in her crusade to uncover the truth. Montreal Police Detective Johnny Emory once again leads the police investigation, hurtling down a collision course with the illicit world he grew up in.

D O M I N I C C . I A N N U Z Z I

CITY OF SINNERS

In this well-crafted suspense novel D.C. Iannuzzi takes readers on a wild ride, as authorities attempt to thwart a bomb threat instigated by an anonymous terrorist group dead-set against the Quebec government’s repressive an-ti-English language laws.

The terrorists send a letter to detective Johnny Emory. The letter warns Emory that they intend to do violence in the name of the all minorities living in Quebec ostensibly to motivate the French ruling class to abandon laws that make discrimination against minorities part of the legitimate legal structure of Quebec. Naturally this precipitates an investiga-tion which is politically charged and hazardous to negotiate.

Iannuzzi turns Quebec separation debate on its head in this fascinating tale, where extremist political rhetoric has been allowed to fester and the line between good and evil has been blurred. Iannuzzi’s characters are interesting, per-sonable and well drawn, his style is tight, lean and very clean.

P U B L I S H E R : Longbridge BooksL A N G U A G E : EnglishY E A R : 2008P A G E S : 212R I G H T S : World

P U B L I S H E R : Longbridge BooksL A N G U A G E : EnglishY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 244R I G H T S : World

PENANCE IS FOR THE WEAKCITY OF SINNERSDominic C. Iannuzzi Dominic C. Iannuzzi

PENANCE IS FOR THE WEAK

An incredibly current political thriller novel, dealing with controversial issues such as separa-tism, struggle for independence and the claims

of ethnic minorities.

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Shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

Lambda Literary Award and Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction Finalist

B A R R Y W E B S T E R

Barry Webster’s first book, The Sound of All Flesh (Porcupine’s Quill), won the ReLit Award for best

short-story collection in 2005. He has been a finalist for the Na-tional Magazine Award, the CBCQuebec Prize, and the Hugh MacLennan Award. Originally from Toronto, he currently lives in East Montreal.

LAVA IN MY BONESSMOKE SHOW

A frustrated Canadian geologist studying global warming becomes obsessed with eating rocks after embarking on his first same-sex relationship in Europe. Back home, his young sister is a high-school girl who suddenly starts to ooze honey through her pores, an affliction that attracts hordes of bees as well as her male classmates but ultimately turns her into a social pariah. Meanwhile, their obsessive Pentecostal mother repeatedly calls on the Holy Spirit to rid her family of demons. The siblings are reunited on a ship bound for Europe where they hope to start a new life, but are unaware that their disguised mother is also on board and plotting to win back their souls, with the help of the Virgin Mary.

Told in a lush baroque prose, this intense, extravagant mag-ic-realist novel combines elements of fairy tales, horror movies, and romances to create a comic, hallucinatory celebration of excess and sensuality.

A doll is taped to the hood of a wedding car. A list of fa-vourite cocktails from the eighties. Hide the drugs from your parents and your kids. Kevin Costner in Waterworld: hot or not? Smoke Show is a novel that will astound readers with its au-dacious, stripped-down narrative set in the mid-nineties about assorted f**k-ups, diehards, and lost souls, seen through a hazy filter of bus fumes and cigarette smoke. Told in “real time,” Smoke Show is raw, candid, amorphous; told through jargon and petty dialogue commonly heard in the street or on public transit, Smoke Show is a novel told in conversation. Itis a disso-nant, close-to-the bone explosion of everything and nothing at the same time, like watching a film whose sound does not match the images. In his debut novel, Clint Burnham evokes William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, and Irvine Welsh, a trip-py period piece that takes no prisoners.

P U B L I S H E R : Arsenal PulpL A N G U A G E : EnglishY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 216R I G H T S : Europe

P U B L I S H E R : Arsenal PulpL A N G U A G E : EnglishY E A R : 2012P A G E S : 216R I G H T S : Europe

LAVA IN MY BONES SMOKE SHOWBarry Webster Clint Burnham

C L I N T B U R N H A MClint Burnham is a Vancouver

writer and critic. He teaches in the English department at Simon Fraser

University and is the author of many books, including the novel Smoke Show (Arsenal Pulp), the poetry collections The Benja-min Sonnets (Bookthug) and Rental Van (Anvil), and the liter-ary theory book The Jamesonian Unconscious (Duke University Press).

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Documents

ARGOSY · Nanina Sylvia Molloy 33 En breve cárcel Jorge di Paola 33 Minga! Ana Basualdo 34 Oldsmobile 1962 C. E. Feiling 34 El mal menor Nicolas Casullo 35 Orificio Patrice Lessard