Carlos Ruiz Zafón: The Prince of Mist

A review of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Prince of Mist.

In 2004, the Spanish author Carlos Ruiz Zafon earned international success and acclaim with his breakthrough novel The Shadow Of The Wind. His books have since sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
But before he wrote this bestselling debut novel for adults, he had already published four books in Spanish for younger readers. The first of these, The Prince Of Mist, has just been translated into English for the first time.
The Prince Of Mist is set in Spain during the Second World War and is the story of 13-year-old Max Carver and his family, who move from the city to the countryside to get away from the war.

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José Saramago: The Notebook

Thomas McGonigle reviews José Saramago's The Notebook

What makes this exceptional is that Saramago was a formally demanding writer in love with unparagraphed prose. Yet he had the ability to hold us in his grasp nonetheless. His narrators were obsessives who convincingly took us away from everyday reality, inhabiting instead a familiar but very strange world.
In "Blindness," an epidemic of sorts strikes an unnamed city, where the vision of the characters fades to a kind of milky white. "Seeing" — its successor, set in the same city and published in 2006 — involves a voters' revolt in which during an election, the vast majority of citizens cast ballots that are blank.
This is allegorical writing, but it gets at the most basic issues of control and resistance, power and personal autonomy. When Saramago rooted his writing in actual detail, he had a revelatory power that was nearly unrivaled, but his main inclination was toward the parable, the slipperiest of all literary tendencies.
Saramago's final book, "The Notebook" — published just two months before his death — does not represent him at his best. Instead, it is an opportunistic selection from the author's blog.
Grab-bag is a handy expression for such a collection, and while the author on display in these pages can be attractive and sympathetic, there is a distracting undercurrent that insidiously undermines his authority.
It all depends where you look. Some of the writing here reflects the wondrous integrity of his previous books

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Interview with Fernando Vallejo

Armando G. Tejeda interviews Fernando Vallejo.

Este libro lo escribió oyendo a José Alfredo Jiménez, a Leo Marini y a Daniel Santos. “El don de la vida es un título irónico, porque la vida es una desgracia. Una carga.
“He empezado a escribirlo varias veces y no he podido. Es un libro sobre la vejez, el gran tema de la literatura porque lo abarca todo. Así que es mi despedida.
“La verdad es que ya llevo escritos tres libros sobre mi muerte, tratando de decir yo me morí en primera persona.
“Tratando de hacer esa maroma literaria, de resolver un problema que me plantea mi obstinación, que soy yo en mi novela, de hablar en nombre propio, con mi voz, con mi lenguaje, que es el de la lengua española común a todos nosotros.
"La lengua literaria vivificada por el habla, que en mi caso es el habla de Colombia. Tal vez escriba otro libro más, pero será para contar lo único que ahora me interesa: mi muerte."

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Saudade: An anthology of fado poetry

Just got news of the release of this anthology. Saudade: An anthology of fado poetry, published by The Gulbenkian Foundation U.K. and edited by Mimi Khalvati with translations from Moniza Alvi, Judith Barrington, David Constantine, Alfred Corn, Ruth Fainlight, Elaine Feinstein, Grey Gowrie, Marilyn Hacker, Philip Jenkins, Fady Joudah, Sarah Maguire, Eric Ormsby, Don Paterson, Pascale Petit, Carol Rumens, Fiona Sampson, Michael Schmidt and George Szirtes.

From the press release:

How do you translate saudade – the yearning soul of Fado music? How do you turn poetic songs in one language into song-like poems in another? What is lost – and gained – in the process?
18 of our finest poets, including Elaine Feinstein, Don Paterson and George Szirtes, have taken up the challenge to create versions in English of the poems on which Fado songs are based. The result is Saudade, the first ever anthology of Fado poetry in English, published today by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and launched at the London Book Fair’s new Literary Translation Centre.
Fado music – Portugal’s urban ‘blues’ tradition – has taken its rightful place on the world stage. The Fado diva Mariza is an international phenomenon, selling over a million records worldwide, and other Fado stars have flourishing international careers, but Fado poetry is still little known outside Portugal.
Edited by the poet Mimi Khalvati, Saudade: An anthology of fado poetry provides the English-reading world with unique access to this distinctive body of Portuguese literature. 53 poems from across the repertoire are published alongside their English ‘versions’: peasant songs from Fado’s earliest days, songs from the genre’s greatest poets, exuberant evocations of the low-life Fado ‘scene’, metaphysical speculation, songs of resistance, and, above all, of love. The poems have been selected by the distinguished Portuguese poet, Vasco Graça Moura.
Translation inevitably involves negotiation between cultures, but the poets have also faced the dilemmas of poems designed to be sung and emblematic of a national identity. Their approaches have spanned the range from literal translation, through versions, to the time-honoured tradition of hommage, but they seek to convey some essence of the culture and music of Fado.
‘The spirit of improvisation, desgarrada, is also important to Fado, just as the singers, styling and interpreting the fixed tunes, establish their own distinctive claims,’ said Mimi Khalvati. ‘By extension, our poets, through the act of translation, carry on this tradition of interpretation, embellishment, improvisation.’
‘The publication of Saudade is a central element in the Foundation’s developing strategy to promote literature in translation. We are delighted that it will be launched at the London Book Fair’s new Literary Translation Centre, another venture we are part of,’ said Andrew Barnett, director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation UK Branch. ‘Literature in translation is a vital art form, bridging cultures, broadening our understanding of other people lives and enriching our own.’
In many ways, Saudade has become a work about translation itself, a reflection on its possibilities and limitations, how, in David Constantine’s words: ‘All poetic translation, even if you keep close, is an answering back, in your own tongue.’

For more information

José Saramago 1922-2010

Todos sabemos que cada dia que nasce é o primeiro para uns e será o último para outros e que, para a maioria é só um dia mais.
[We all know that each new day is the first for some and will be the last for others, and for most is just one more day]

José Saramago

Nobel laureate José Saramago died today here are some reactions.

The Portuguese novelist José Saramago, who explored Portugal's troubled political identity in a series of novels published over the last four decades and won the Nobel prize for literature in 1998, died today at the age of 87.
An outspoken atheist and communist, he challenged the orthodoxies of post-dictatorship Portuguese life with novels such as Baltasar and Blimunda, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis and All the Names, but reached his widest audience with the 2008 film of his 1995 novel, Blindness, directed by Fernando Meirelles. He spent the last years of his life in Lanzarote after the Portuguese government had vetoed the nomination of his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ for an EU literary prize in 1992.

guardian.co.uk

José Saramago, the Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998 with novels that combine surrealist experimentation with a kind of sardonic peasant pragmatism, died on Friday at his home in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. He was 87.
The cause was multiple organ failure after a long illness, the José Saramago Foundation said in an announcement on its Web site, josesaramago.org.
A tall, commandingly austere man with a dry, schoolmasterly manner, Mr. Saramago gained international acclaim for novels like "Baltasar and Blimunda" and "Blindness." (A film adaptation of "Blindness" by the Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles was released in 2008.)

The New York Times

Jose Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in literature for early novels that explored historical themes from unconventional angles and later works in which inexplicable events threaten society’s underpinnings, has died. He was 87.
The writer died earlier today at his home in Lanzarote, Spain, after a lengthy illness, according to the website of the Jose Saramago Foundation.
Saramago, the only Portuguese winner of the literary prize, was 60 before he wrote most of the novels for which he was honored, having worked as a car mechanic, civil servant, production manager in a publishing company and newspaper editor before becoming a full-time writer.

businessweek.com

Jose Saramago, who became the first Portuguese-language winner of the Nobel Literature prize although his popularity at home was dampened by his unflinching support for Communism, blunt manner and sometimes difficult prose style, died Friday.
Saramago, 87, died at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain's Canary Islands, of multi-organ failure after a long illness, the Jose Saramago Foundation said.
"The writer died in the company of his family, saying goodbye in a serene and placid way," the foundation said.
Saramago was an outspoken man who antagonized many, and moved to the Canary Islands after a public spat in 1992 with the Portuguese government, which he accused of censorship.
His 1998 Nobel accolade was nonetheless widely cheered in his homeland after decades of the award eluding writers of a language used by some 170 million people around the world.

The Associated Press

O prémio Nobel da Literatura de 1998 faleceu aos 87 anos na sua casa na ilha espanhola de Lanzarote.

O escritor português, que recebeu o prémio Nobel da Literatura e o Prémio Camões, deixa uma vasta obra literária, da qual se destaca, entre outros, os livros Memorial do Convento, O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo e Levantado do Chão.

O seu romance Ensaio sobre a Cegueira foi adaptado ao cinema pelo realizador brasileiro Fernando Meirelles numa película co-produzida por três países

tsf.pt

El escritor, poeta y dramaturgo portugués José Saramago murió en España, a los 87 años.
El fallecimiento fue informado esta mañana por su editor Zeferino Coelho, que precisó que el literato murió en su casa de Lanzarote, en las islas Canarias. Su salud se había deteriorado en los últimos meses.
Saramago ganó el Premio Nobel de Literatura en 1998 y su última novela, Caín, se publicó el año pasado. En su prolífera obra se destacan: La balsa de piedra (1986), El Evangelio según Jesucristo (1991), Ensayo sobre la ceguera (1995), Todos los nombres (1997), El hombre duplicado (2002) y Ensayo sobre la lucidez (2004).

lanacion.com

O escritor faleceu às 13 horas locais (8 horas de Brasília), segundo sua esposa e tradutora, Pilar del Rio. Ainda de acordo com ela, Saramago havia passado uma noite tranquila e, depois de tomar café da manhã com a mulher, começou a passar mal e faleceu em pouco tempo.
O autor recebeu o prêmio máximo da Literatura em 1998. Segundo a premiação, Saramago "nos permitiu mais uma vez apreender uma realidade ilusória por meio de parábolas sustentadas pela imaginação, pela compaixão e pela ironia".

estadao.com.br

Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, the Nobel laureate best known for controversial works such as Blindness and The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, has died at age 87.
Saramago died at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain's Canary Islands, his publisher, Zeferino Coelho, said Friday.
He suffered multiple organ failure after a long illness, according to the Jose Saramago Foundation.
"The writer died in the company of his family, saying goodbye in a serene and placid way," the foundation said.

cbcnews.com

Who's Who in Savage Detectives

Juan García Madero tiene elementos de Juan Esteban Harrington y de Roberto Bolaño, aunque en la novela se dice que es mexicano y vive con sus tíos, lo que no corresponde a los chilenos. Arturo Belano es Roberto Bolaño. Julio César Álamo o “el poeta campesino” es Juan Buñuelos. Ulises Lima es Mario Santiago.

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Juan García Madero	Juan Esteban Harrington Roberto Bolaño
Arturo Belano	Roberto Bolaño
Julio César Álamo	Juan Buñuelos
Ulises Lima	Mario Santiago
Césarea Tinajero	Concha Urquiza
Ernesto San Epifanio	Darío Galicia
Rafael Barrios	Rubén Medina
Jacinto Requena	José Peguero
Felipe Müller	Bruno Montané
Pancho Rodríguez	Ramón Méndez
Moctezuma Rodríguez	Cuauhtémoc Méndez
Angélica Font	Vera Larrosa
María Font	Mara Larrosa
Joaquín Font	Manolo Larrosa
"Piel Divina"	Jorge Hernández
Laura Jáuregui	Lisa Johnson
Xóchitl García	Guadalupe Ochoa
Fabio Ernesto Logiacomo	Jorge Boccanera
Luis Sebastián Rosado	José Joaquín Blanco
Amadeo Salvatierra	Rodolfo Sanabria
Auxilio Lacouture	Alcira
Lisandro Morales	Lautaro
Vargas Prado	José Donoso Pareja
Roberto Rosas	José Rosas Ribeyro
Claudia	Claudia Kerlik
José "Zopilote" Colina	José de la Colina
Pancracio Montesol	Augusto Monterroso
Pere Ordoñez	Pere Gimferrer

Hilda Hidalgo: Of Love and Other Demons

Hilda Hidalgo's screen adaptation of Gabríel García Marquez’s novel, "Of Love and Other Demons" at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Of love and Other Demons
Del amor y otros demonios
(Colombia, Costa Rica, 2009, 97 mins, 35mm)
Directed By: Hilda Hidalgo
Producers: Laura Imperiale, Clara María Ochoa, Laura Pacheco, Hilda Hidalgo
Screenwriter: Hilda Hidalgo
Cinematographer: Marcelo Camorino
Editor: Mariana Rodríguez
Cast: Pablo Derqui, Eliza Triana, Jordi Dauder, Joaquin Climent, Margarita Rosa de Francisco, Damián Alcázar, Martha Leal
Trailer

Based on Gabríel García Marquez’s novel, Of Love and Other Demons is set during the colonial era in a South American seaport—the home of bishops and viceroys, enlightened thinkers and inquisitors, lepers, and pirates. After being bitten by a rabid dog and subsequently believed to be possessed, 13-year-old noble Sierva Maria is imprisoned in a convent, where Father Delaura, a young protégé of the local bishop, is sent to oversee her exorcism. But instead of spirits, he must grapple with the unexpected passion that Sierva Maria awakes in his soul and a love that is at once improbable, deeply moving, and straining at the constraints of tradition and faith.

Costa Rican director Hilda Hidalgo’s debut feature is a masterful blend of understated performances infused with the dreamlike atmosphere created by the chiaroscuro cinematography. As Sierva Maria’s mother, famed Columbian actress Margarita Rosa de Francisco may be the most recognizable name in the cast, but the film truly belongs to its young leads. Eliza Triana’s Maria smolders onscreen, her stunning beauty drawing Pablo Derqui’s young priest into the depths of hopeless devotion.
[Synopsis provided by LAFF]

Vargas Llosa says that reading "Tirant lo Blanc" helped him find his calling

"Esta obra me enseñó que el escritor auténtico vuelca en lo que escribe todo lo que hay en él, lo mejor y lo peor"

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Tirant lo Blanc is an epic romance written by the Valencian knight Joanot Martorell, supposedly finished by Martí Joan de Galba and published in Valencia in 1490. It is one of the best known medieval works of literature in Catalan, and played an important role in the evolution of the Western novel because of its influence on the author Miguel de Cervantes.

Roberto Bolaño: Antwerp

Sam Munson reviews Roberto Bolaño's Antwerp.

Displayed prominently on the back cover of Antwerp, the latest of the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s works to appear in English, is a quote from the author himself: “The only novel that doesn’t embarrass me is Antwerp.” The quote seems tailor-made to answer a common desire in literary culture: to know authors in their unspoiled youth. Antwerp, after all, is Bolaño’s earliest prose work, written in the early 1980s though not published in Spanish until 2002. It is rigorously experimental in form, and makes no concessions to anything other than his own idiosyncratic taste. And perhaps grasping after the purity of youth is a natural part of formulating any literary-biographical arc, especially one so aesthetically charged as Bolaño’s. His career in English began in 2003, the year of his death (a Bolaño-esque touch in itself) with the publication of his short 2000 novel By Night in Chile, a pseudo-memoir by a cowardly and very intelligent cultural servitor of Augusto Pinochet. In the ensuing seven years, his work has enjoyed a meteoric rise in the estimation of American critics and readers, due largely to his long novels The Savage Detectives and 2666, published in 2006 and 2007 (though written almost a decade apart): complex, daringly executed books that take as a dual theme the bestial nature of our modern life and the ultimate powerlessness of art.

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Pedro Almodóvar: Culture Against Impunity

"My name is Virgilio Leret Ruiz, aviator, head of the aerial forces of Western Morocco. I refused to support the upheaval of soldiers in Melilla and at dawn on July 18 1936, my colleagues made me the first person to be executed during the Civil War. I had no trial, no lawyer and no sentence. My daughters continue to look for me. For how long?".

Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar stepped into the shoes of one of the victims of executions during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), one of 15 people "2assassinated in an arbitrary and unjust manner" to whom an equal number of Spanish intellectuals and artists have dedicated a video "against the impunity of Franco's regime".
Pedro Almodóvar, Maribel Verdú, Hugo Silva, Juan José Millás, Carmen Machi, Juan Diego Botto, José Manuel Seda, María Galiana, Aitana Sánchez-Gijón, Miguel Ríos, Pilar Bardem, Almudena Grandes, Juan Diego, Paco León and Javier Bardem play the 15 characters in this this short film, that tells the story of 15 real people murdered during the Spanish during the Civil War and the dictatorship, whose families still wait for justice.

Interview with Isabel Allende

An interview with Isabel Allende from Big Think

"I prefer fiction because in fiction I do whatever I want," says Chilean-American author Isabel Allende, who has published 18 books of fiction, non-fiction and memoirs over the past three decades. "Whatever I do is my responsibility and that's it. In a memoir, it’s not only about me; it’s also about the people that live with me. The people I love the most. And I have to ask myself, 'What is mine to tell and what is not mine to tell? Am I invading somebody else's life or privacy?'"

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Interview with Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Susan Mansfield interviews Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

It's raining the day I meet Carlos Ruiz Zafon, so we begin with a discussion about rain. London rain, according to Zafon, is "annoying, not spectacular".
"I spend a lot of time in LA, and when it rains there you get the entire rainfall for the year in two days, raindrops the size of mangoes. And in Barcelona, the Mediterranean storms come up from the sea, thunder and lightning, it's like the end of the world."
Readers of Zafon's novels, The Shadow Of The Wind and The Angel's Game, will recognise those rainstorms. They will also recognise the natural flair for drama. In Zafon's world it's not enough for rain to be rain, it has to be a spooky, mist-swirling drizzle, or an apocalyptic downpour.

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