We are happy to announce that Graywolf Press acquired World English rights to “The Saint” (La Santita) by our new Ecuadorian author Mafe Moscoso, a short story collection by anthropologist and poet Mafe Moscoso. Rooted in Andean cosmology and indigenous-futurist aesthetics, the book blends allegory, folklore, and speculative elements to explore the boundaries between life and death, body and spirit, privilege and oppression.

The volume counts on a foreword by Mariana Enriquez and a reel by Cristina Rivera Garza:

“The Saint is a collection of wonderful stories written in truly careful, sensual, volcanic language.”
Cristina Rivera Garza, Pulitzer Prize winner 2024, in the reel „Bibliotecaria por un día“ (Instituto Cervantes Budapest)

The rights sold so far are:

Bilbao: Consonni 2024, 128 p. (rights in Spain, Mexico and Argentina)
Brazil: Peabiru 2025 · Ecuador: Recodo Press 2025  · USA: Graywolf Press (World English rights)

An English sample translation is available.

The New York Times has published an extensive feature on Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa, on occasion of Archipelago Books’ launching of The Living and the Rest in the USA on 27th May, in the English translation of the author’s longtime translator Daniel Hahn.

Agualusa states that his novel is “inspired by the real-life charms of Mozambique Island”, a small island on the northern coast of Mozambique which he has made his home almost ten years ago by marrying a local filmmaker.

Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is convinced that “Agualusa is one of the prophets of our African ‘marvelous’ complexity”, a complexitiy which Agualusa himself likes to describe as “African realism”. According to Anderson Tepper, reading The Living and the Rest “you have entered Agualusa’s world, where the boundaries between the real and imaginary are porous, and dreams become their own reality.” And indeed, dreams are essential in Agualusa’s life and work. “We must start dreaming again, in a collective way. That’s the only way to transform the world: to dream together”, he says.

You can find the whole article here:

> New York Times Feature

The Fortunate Ones is a feature film based on Lídia Jorge‘s novel The Wind Whistling in the Cranes (“O Vento Assobiando nas Gruas“), directed by Jeanne Waltz.

The film will celebrate its world premiere on 7 October 2023 at the Mill Valley Film Festival in the USA.

> https://www.mvff.com/program/the-fortunate-ones/

The Lídia Jorge Chair, created and announced by the UMass Amherst University in Massachussets, will be inaugurated on 5th of April in the United States of America, with a ceremony that will count with the presence of the Portuguese writer.

A colloquium dedicated to her work will take place with speakers such as the professor of Portuguese Studies Ana Paula Ferreira, from the University of Minesotta, who will focus on her intervention on “Lídia Jorge’s Fiction and the Promise of Democracy”, followed by a communication that will be given by Lídia Jorge herself and by a reception to all those who were invited to be present in this event.

On Wednesday 6th, Lídia Jorge will travel to Providence, in Rhode Island, where she will have a meeting with doctoral students from Brown University. On the 8th, she will give a lecture in Dartmouth.

UMass Amherst points out that Lídia Jorge is one of the most representative voices of the post-revolution generation in Portugal and that her work (including fiction, theatre, children’s literature, essays and poetry) has gained international recognition with translations into more than twenty languages.

UMass Amherst thus follows the example of the University of Geneva in Switzerland, which, in 2020, created the Lídia Jorge Chair.

> UMass AMherst University

The Wind Whistling in the Cranes, launched on 8th February by Liveright (Norton), has been featured in the New York Times Book Review.

“The novel moves rhythmically.…This is a thrillingly immersive ‘parable about life, about the struggle between rich and poor, between one race and another.’ Even the trees and surrounding landscape — ‘mute figures who, of course, had knowledge and memory’ — have their point of view.”
New York Times Book Review

> nytimes.com/2022/02/18/books/review/lidia-jorge.html

The Wind Whistling in the Cranes, launched on 8th February by Liveright (Norton), has already received several excellent reviews.

“Jorge delivers a dose of near-contemporary history tempered by a page-turning family saga and romance.”
Kirkus Review
> kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/

“Comparisons have already been drawn to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels—and it’s not hard to see why with the book’s distinctive blend of social history and the most intimate of family sagas. But Jorge’s novel is very much its own thing, with a razor-sharp postcolonial subtext that asks deeper questions about whom we consider the outsider, and why.”
Vogue
> vogue.com/article/best-books-2022

Vista Chinesa, the latest novel by Tatiana Salem Levy has just been launched at Todavia in Brazil. The media coverage is overwhelming. Please find a selection further down.
An English sample translation is available.

“The strength of the book lies in its sensitive construction, in its language, but also in its conception: Tatiana does not narrate her own pain, nor does she invent the pain of others. She gives her hand to Joana Jabace, the victim of the crime in question, and together they find the words to express what one would fatally silence, what the other would not dare to explore. And now the gesture of solidarity has become explosive, is taking hold of a community of readers and has already given rise to other accounts of the unspeakable. It has become the ordinary action that the present demands of us.”
Julián Fuks, UOL Brasil

“One of the merits of Vista Chinesa is that it articulates organically, through a well-calibrated form, the public and intimate issues it raises.”
Michel Laub, Valor

“How do we write about something we don’t talk about? Out of fear, shame or a sense of guilt that often comes from the judgment of others, the subject is taboo and little reported on by victims. In Vista Chinesa, Tatiana Salem Levy’s new novel, however, it is on every page.”
Folha de S.Paulo

“In the book, it is as if we ourselves were transported directly to the forest, to the endless hell to which Julia was dragged.”

“The book makes clear the need to not forget, to exhaust scene by scene, to give names to things so that the possibility arises of moving on. After finishing the book, one may wonder if it is first and foremost, a political work or if it is the story of a singular pain. For Levy, every book is political.”

“A must-read”
Elle

“Because every day, even if unconsciously, we fear the exact scene narrated in this immense and powerful work.”

“In Vista Chinesa, Tatiana narrates in a precise and vigorous way the crime that took place in Rio de Janeiro. It is necessary, poignant, terrifying, excellent literature.”

“It is a book about women who have been broken and the light that can emanate from them. About being alive and carrying on. It is a great book.”
Folha Corrida/Folha de S.Paulo

“The episode of sexual violence, the core of Tatiana’s work, is narrated with a disturbing richness of detail. So strong that you can sense the smell of the forest entering through your nose. The author pours out all that agony with rawness and, often, without drawing breath for punctuation. As if the text were bile spewing from the throat.”
O Globo

“Vista Chinesa, by Tatiana Salem Levy, is one of the most important books of recent times.”

“The main manifestation of overcoming hardship emerges in the author’s gesture, as she takes the pain of another as the starting point of her creation, of her research, producing collective life from a relationship of friendship. In Vista Chinesa, the literary form is thus an expression of the concept of sisterhood, going beyond the limits that, since becoming a mother, the character had imagined for herself.”
Revista Pessoa

Between the months of March and June, during the quarantine, José Luís Peixoto wrote a book of poetry called Return Home (“Regresso a Casa”), published or forthcoming at Quetzal (Portugal), Dublinense (Brazil), Cuadrivio (Mexico), and soon at La Bella Varsovia (Spain).

> observador.pt

Also during this period, Peixoto created a website about his travel texts: > joseluispeixotoemviagem.com/

We’re happy to announce that Ullstein launched QualityLand 2.0 on 12 October with a total of 120,000 copies so far. An English working translation of the entire text is already available.

www.ullstein-buchverlage.de