LITMIR.BIZ

Winner of the Eduard Vilde Literary Award[/b] The Brother opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of men—men who recently cheated the stranger's supposed sister out of her inheritance and mother's estate. Resigned to giving up on her dreams and ambitions, Laila took this swindling in stride, something that Brother won't stand for. Soon after his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men, motivating them to get their revenge on Brother. Meanwhile, a rat-faced paralegal makes it his mission to discover Brother's true identity . . . The first novel of Rein Raud's to appear in English, The Brother is, in Raud's own words, a spaghetti western told in poetic prose, simultaneously paying tribute to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco. With its well-drawn characters and quick moving plot, it takes on more mythic aspects, lightly touching on philosophical ideas of identity and the ruthless way the world is divided into winners and losers. Rein Raud is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and several collections of short fiction. He's also a scholar in Japanese studies and has translated several works of Japanese into Estonian. One of his short pieces appeared in Best European Fiction 2015. Adam Cullen was born and educated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but currently resides in Tallinn where he's translated dozens of plays, stories, and poems. He's also translated three published novels, including Radio by Tõnu Õnnepalu and The Cavemen Chronicle by Mihkel Mutt.

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Never-before translated work from one of France's most renowned authors. Duras also made Abahn Sabana David into the film Jaune le soleil, which is one reason why this title will appeal to professors of film studies in addition to those teaching French or comp lit. This is the third book of Duras's to come out from Open Letter, which includes The Sailor from Gibraltar, one of the press's best-selling, and most widely adopted, titles. It reads like a play in prose, and will be compelling to fans of Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, or other modernist playwrights.

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Winner of the 2014 Contemporary Bulgarian Novelist Award co-sponsored by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation and the America for Bulgaria Foundation. First novel of Tenev's to be published in English despite Angela Rodel winning a PEN Michael Henry Heim Translation Grant for her work on his short story collection, Holy Light. Party Headquarters also won the Vick Foundation Award for novel of the year—the most prestigious award for Bulgarian literature. He co-wrote the screenplay for the film Alienation (Otchuzhdenie), which was an Official Selection of Venice Days and won four international awards.

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"[Labbé] wreaks havoc on narrative rules from the start and keeps doing it."—Bookforum Loquela, Carlos Labbé's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities. At a basic level, this book is like a hybrid of Julio Cortázar and Paul Auster: a distorted detective novel, a love story, and a radical statement about narrative art. Behind the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, behind the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from the best summer afternoons, behind the destiny of Neutria—a city that disappears with childhood and returns with desire—and behind a literary move­ment that might be the ultimate vanguard while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel—the author or the reader. Through an array of voices, overlapping story­lines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious prose, Labbé carves out a space for himself among such form-defying Latin American greats as Diamela Eltit, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Jorge Luis Borges. [b]Carlos Labbé, one of [i]Granta's «Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists,» was born in Chile and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, [i]Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings, he is a musician, and has released three albums. [b]Will Vanderhyden received an MA in literary translation from the University of Rochester.

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"Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language."—Ricardo Piglia"What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess."—[i]BookforumIn modern-day Paris, Pichón Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscript—which might be fictional, or could be a memoir—by Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyone—even the other patients—into sleeping with her. Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, [i]The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exile—a huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writers—as well as an examination of madness. [b]Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including [i]Scars and [i]La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for [i]The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books. [b]Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

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Featured on Jeff VanderMeer's «Epic List of Favorite Books Read in 2015»"Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels."—Gabriel García Marquez"Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability."—Natasha Wimmer, The Nation"It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer."—John Darnielle, The Mountain GoatsDespite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Mercè Rodoreda published during her lifetime. We first meet its young protagonist, Adrià Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land that one can only suppose is Catalonia, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and with a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a composite, if surrealistic, view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world. As in Rodoreda's Death in Spring, nature and death play an fundamental role in a narrative that often takes on a phantasmagoric quality and seems to be a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.Mercè Rodoreda (1908–1983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short stories—Twenty-Two Short Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Sea—that would eventually make her internationally famous. Maruxa Relaño[/b] is a journalist and translator based in Barcelona. She has worked as a translator for The Wall Street Journal, a writer for NY1, and wrote articles for the New York Daily News, Newsday, and New York magazine, among other publications. Martha Tennent[/b] was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

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Neuman's earlier novels—Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves—were both critical and commercial hits. This is his first collection of stories to appear in English. Andrés will be teaching in Columbia in the fall of 2015 and will be available for interviews, events, etc. He was named to the «Bogata39» list of the most important Spanish-language authors under the age of 40, and was also part of Granta's «Best of Young Spanish-language Novelists» special issue. His books have been named to several «best of» lists, and Traveler of the Century was shortlisted for both the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the IMPAC Award.

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"The most important Argentinian writer since Borges."— The Independent The One Before is a triptych of sorts, consisting of a series of short pieces—called «Arguments»—and two longer stories—"Half-Erased" and «The One Before»—all of which revolve around the ideas of exile and memory.Many of the characters who populate Juan José Saer's other novels appear here, including Tomatis, Ángel Leto, and Washington Noriega (who appear in La Grande , Scars , and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington , all of which are available from Open Letter). Saer's typical themes are on display in this collection as well, as is his idiosyncratic blend of philosophical ruminations and precise storytelling.From the story of the two characters who decide to bury a message in a bottle that simply says «MESSAGE,» to Pigeon Garay's attempt to avoid the rising tides and escape Argentina for Europe, The One Before evocatively introduces readers to Saer's world and gives the already indoctrinated new material about their favorite characters. Juan José Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande ), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event . Roanne Kantor is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her translation of The One Before won the 2009 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation. Her translations from Spanish have appeared in Little Star magazine, Two Lines , and Palabras Errantes .

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From the 2010 winner of the Best Translated Book Award comes a harrowing, controversial novel about a woman's revenge, Jewish identity, and how to talk about Adolf Hitler in today's world.Elinor's comfortable life—popular newspaper column, stable marriage, well-adjusted kids—is totally upended when she finds out that her estranged uncle is coming to Jerusalem to give a speech asking forgiveness for his decades-old book, Hitler, First Person .A shocking novel that galvanized the Jewish diaspora, Hitler, First Person was Aaron Gotthilf's attempt to understand—and explain—what it would have been like to be Hitler. As if that wasn't disturbing enough, while writing this controversial novel, Gotthilf stayed in Elinor's parent's house and sexually assaulted her «slow» sister.In the time leading up to Gotthilf's visit, Elinor will relive the reprehensible events of that time so long ago, over and over, compulsively, while building up the courage—and plan—to avenge her sister in the most conclusive way possible: by murdering Gotthilf, her own personal Hilter.Along the way to the inevitable confrontation, Gail Hareven uses an obsessive, circular writing style to raise questions about Elinor's mental state, which in turn makes the reader question the veracity of the supposed memoir that they're reading. Is it possible that Elinor is following in her uncle's writerly footpaths, using a first-person narrative to manipulate the reader into forgiving a horrific crime?Gail Hareven[/b] is the author of eleven novels, including The Confessions of Noa Weber , which won both the Sapir Prize for Literature and the Best Translated Book Award. Dalya Bilu is the translator of A.B.Yehoshua, Aharon Appelfeld, and many others. She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Israel Culture and Education Ministry Prize for Translation, and the Jewish Book Council Award for Hebrew-English Translation. She lives in Jerusalem.

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"The novel of the decade, if not of the century."—Christophe Claro Francis Servain Mirkovic, a French-born Croat who has been working for the French Intelligence Services for fifteen years, is traveling by train from Milan to Rome. He's carrying a briefcase whose contents he's selling to a representative from the Vatican; the briefcase contains a wealth of information about the violent history of the Zone—the lands of the Mediterranean basin, Spain, Algeria, Lebanon, Italy, that have become Mirkovic's specialty. Over the course of a single night, Mirkovic visits the sites of these tragedies in his memory and recalls the damage that his own participation in that violence—as a soldier fighting for Croatia during the Balkan Wars—has wreaked in his own life. Mirkovic hopes that this night will be his last in the Zone, that this journey will expiate his sins, and that he can disappear with Sashka, the only woman he hasn't abandoned, forever . . . One of the truly original books of the decade—and written as a single, hypnotic, propulsive, physically irresistible sentence—Mathias Énard's Zone provides an extraordinary and panoramic view of the turmoil that has long deviled the shores of the Mediterranean. Mathias Énard has won numerous prizes for his works, including the the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre for his novel Zone. He is currently a professor of Arabic at the University of Barcelona. Charlotte Mandell has translated works from a number of important French authors, including Proust, Flaubert, Genet, Maupassant, and Blanchot, among others. She received a Literary Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her translation of Enard's Zone. Brian Evenson is a translator from French and the author of ten books of fiction, including The Open Curtain, which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award.

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