At the cost of losing his freedom, a man goes to the police to confess to a murder, whose victim, he claims, is hidden in the heart of the Atacama desert. From there, a whirlwind of unexpected events begins that will captivate the reader. Detectives who are working against time and an average citizen whose motives for turning himself in are unknown. The desert as a silent witness to a chilling event.
Once again, Carlos Pinto delves into his characters’ psyche to explore those dark labyrinths where the beast that sleeps in each of us resides. The Path of the Beasts (“El camino de las bestias”) is inspired by real events and suggests that this animality could surface in any of us, when we least expect it.

A medical student performing clandestine abortions becomes involved in the death of a pregnant young woman who dies during one of his procedures. When accused of stealing supplies from his university, he takes advantage of this minor offense to spend a brief period in prison, thus avoiding investigation into the young woman’s death. Ignoring his warnings, his girlfriend decides to continue the macabre business despite her lack of knowledge.
Veteran detective Facundo Pineda becomes the main threat to the couple due to his persistence and intuition, insisting on finding the links between two very different incidents that will bring him closer to the truth. But what initially seems like just another case in his career turns into a real nightmare, threatening to drag down those around him.
In The Garden of the Innocents (“El jardín de los inocentes”), journalist Carlos Pinto draws inspiration from a dramatic real case to unveil the dark secrets of two individuals that, after making poor decisions, cross the limits of ethics, morality, and legality.

The Silence of the Damned (“El silencio de los malditos”) is based on a real case. A journalist gains access to a dangerous convict who no one has ever managed to interview before. In a cramped interrogation room inside the prison, he starts to tell a story that goes beyond a confession and becomes a one-way journey into the inscrutable dominion of a criminal mind. The man has committed a horrendous murder, without any apparent cause, but it unveils a life of deprivation, pain, and revenge. Carlos Pinto applies his mastery to literature in order to descend into the depths of hell that are the human condition. It’s a striking first novel.

Written in easily accessible language, La Rosa de la China (“The Rose of China”) is a captivating historical novel featuring vivid characters in an enthralling adventure story set in 17^th century Mexico. The beautiful Chinese woman Catarina San Juan is gifted with visions and special healing powers. When she meets the outlaw Rolando, a Chinese Samurai, they fall in love. Then Rolando’s sworn enemy tries to kidnap Catarina – will they escape his henchmen? Years later, Father Solís comes to La Puebla to impede Catarina’s canonisation. But in a hidden shrine, he finds Catarina’s diary, and the deeper he gets involved in her story, the more fascinated he becomes with the saint…

Two castaways meet one night in a bar. They know each other from the past, from when they were other people. One was a teacher and a football coach; the other, Darío, was his pupil. Now, to extinguish the memory, they drink with the same ferocious discipline, but Darío feeds on a pain that is still too vivid: of a night, nine years ago, in which two rival gangs of narco-traffickers finished off their town El Edén. That night, after curfew, Darío goes out with his girlfriend to look for his younger brother. In an explosion he loses Norma. Parra uses elegant narrative tricks that guide the reader with a beautiful and subtle rhythm through Darío‘s labyrinth of memories. Labyrinth (“Laberinto”) gives a voice to the victims, normal people who are simply “collateral damage” in a battle that is alien to them, giving space for human relationships and a love story that in all its intensity and passion illuminates the novel – love in times of war.

His stories are highly topical and he can be seen as a chronicler of the profound changes in his region, the North of Mexico. The deceptive proximity to the USA, beyond the Rio Bravo, decides upon the fate of the people who live there. The men leave, perhaps lucky enough to cross the river without being noticed, though often their first attempt fails and leads to death. The women stay behind in the inhospitable countryside, having to bring children into the world all on their own, waiting all their lives for their men to return. The stories in No Man’s Land (“Tierra de nadie”) and The Borders of the Night (“Los límites de la noche”) are exciting, sometimes erotic and mostly dramatic, even tragic. It is especially Parra’s language, simple but nevertheless precise, which touches the reader and gives his texts a timeless note.

In his first novel, Nostalgia for the Shadow (“Nostalgia de la sombra”), Parra delivers a study on the personality of a man, who initially kills in order to survive. This experience leads to the transformation from man to beast. Written from the perspective of the murderer, the novel forces its reader to identify with this role. Nostalgia de la sombra is a complex thriller, which increases the suspense by trapping its reader in a conflicting state of disgust and fascination.

A domestic worker confronts her rural origins against the backdrop of the 2013 political protests in Rio. As demonstrators rail against President Dilma Rousseff’s government, this aging woman—a cook—listens to the endless chatter of a professor who tries to account for her life’s hardships and the current shortcomings of Brazilian democracy. They embark on a journey into politics highlighted by her supposed connection to Brazil’s first dictator Floriano Peixoto, known as the Iron Marshal. The cook obsesses over her supposed relative and President Rousseff’s recent speeches. Walking the same streets Floriano had walked a century earlier she and the professor contemplate an eerie parallel between the beginnings of Brazilian democracy and its current challenges.

Blending fact and fiction, O marechal de costas (“The Iron Marshal”) depicts these challenges in a complex and engaging panorama of Brazilian politics over the past 120 years.

A few days before retiring, Jurandir travels to Recife to settle a labour issue and ends up committed to a psychiatric hospital. Reporting on his dreams while remembering his affair with a colleague and the tragic death of his son André, a different perspective on his past life starts to unfold. O sonâmbulo amador (“The Amateur Sleepwalker”) chronicles the adventures of a disenchanted, humble protagonist, revealing the wounds of his past as in a jigsaw. The novel won the Telecom Prize 2013.

His debut novel Nosso grão mais fino (“Our Finer Grain”) is a lyrical portrait of family decadence and love gone wrong in twentieth-century Brazil. Ana and Vicente recall the ending of their affair and how it started back on their families’ sugarcane plantation. Together, they try to make sense of Ana’s father’s suicide during a Zeppelin trip, which changed their lives: Ana married Vicente’s uncle and made Vicente her secret lover, thus leaving both men in limbo. But while Vicente prefers the uncanny presence of past possibilities, Ana holds on to real life. The innovative unfolding of the narrative and the dense atmosphere make this novel the new literary discovery from Brazil.

In his long-awaited novel Rosen – A Jewish Story (“Rosen – una historia judía”), Paszkowski tells the story of a colourful character who has perfected the art of manipulating everyone around him. At the age of 16, handsome Max Rosen, born into a Jewish Argentinean family, decides to turn his back on religion and becomes a bon viveur and a successful businessman in the gambling trade. But in spite of all his efforts to ignore his roots, he cannot avoid dealing with God and the history of the Jews. Based on a true story, the novel immerses the reader in a fascinating life, and time.

Thesis on a Homicide (“Tesis sobre un homicidio”) is a thrilling novel about the perfect crime. Having completed his studies in Paris with distinction, the lawyer Paul Besançon returns to Buenos Aires, where he attends a course given by the famous criminologist Bermúdez. The 55-year-old, whose personal life is rather unstable, feels irritated by the cool and arrogant, yet extremely bright young man. When the corpse of a young woman is found near the faculty alongside a subtle sign noticed only by Bermúdez, the criminologist is sure that the culprit is his best student. To prove his guilt and to regain his own superiority, he grows increasingly obsessed with the case.

With All About Lorena (“Alrededor de Lorena”) Paszkowski departs from the crime genre and seduces the reader into the realm of poetic prose. The title character is the middle class woman Lorena, who had always dreamt of getting married, while her husband, Ricardo, did not find the trip to the registry office quite so easy. They then embark on normal married life and have two daughters. The unexpected turning point comes when they take the trip to Paris that Lorena had long desired, with Ricardo only braving his fear of flying with difficulty. When he suffers a panic attack during a stop-off in São Paulo, she continues her journey and falls in love – on the steps of Montmartre – with Gerard, a Frenchman. Lorena’s decision to divorce her husband leaves his world in tatters. Ricardo loses the power of speech and spends two years in a psychiatric clinic, where he is cared for an attractive nurse with a blond wig – Lorena? Later, he looks for work and a roof over his head, and finds both as a proofreader in a publishing house, never leaving the building. He has a humiliating relationship with the manager of the publishing company, at the outer limits of human dignity and sexual lust. But, once again, the woman appears to be none other than Lorena…

With elements reminiscent of director David Lynch or writer Herman Melville, this multiple-voiced and experimental novel leads the reader into a labyrinth of passions, driven along by the question of the hidden desires and identities concealed within us – and how far we are prepared to go to fulfil them.

One day the bank official William Efraín Puente is abducted and forced to live the life of a certain Gómez. There is little sense in him insisting on his real identity, so he finally succumbs and takes the place of Gómez. Who would not like the chance to lead someone else’s life? The reader follows Gómez in awe into his new life where some indefinable threat seems to lurk. And yet the structure of The Other Gómez (“El otro Gómez”) is such that the reader simply cannot put down the book until the altogether compelling end, when real Gómez turns up.

In The Mountain (“A Montanha”), a writer travels across the world, attending literary events while working on a book inspired by the experiences of cancer patients, recounted directly by those who entrusted him with their most intimate truths. Haunted by the memories of his father, who also succumbed to the disease, and unsettled by his own doubts, he is suddenly confronted with an extraordinary twist: he is kidnapped by a mysterious Swedish academic who shadows his every step, who spies every moment of his creative process and seems to know all his thoughts.
Rooted in authentic testimonies from an oncology hospital and shaped by a profound autobiographical dimension, this novel pushes beyond the boundaries of realism, gradually descending into the realm of surrealism. What begins as an intimate reflection on memory, illness, and creativity evolves into a daring allegory of human existence itself.
Ambitious in scope and inventive in form, this work ventures into unexplored territories of contemporary fiction, where reality and imagination blur, and where literature becomes both a testimony to suffering and a meditation on the meaning of life.

Peixoto’s new novel Sunday Lunch (“Almoço de Domingo”) is a tribute to the Portuguese entrepreneur Rui Nabeiro, founder of the Delta Cafés, who celebrated his ninetieth birthday on 28 March 2021.
With great poetic power, the author traces the life of a man who wanted to become “a rich man of a different kind” and who today is a symbol of entrepreneurial commitment. Coming from the simplest of backgrounds and growing up in the small town of Campo Maior in the Alto Alentejo near the Spanish border, he succeeds in developing the small family business into an internationally operating corporate empire without sacrificing his humanity. Peixoto accompanies his protagonist through the two days before and on his birthday itself and lets individual episodes of his career emerge in short flashbacks. But “Sunday Lunch” is far more than just a biographical novel.
Written with genuine empathy, the book is a reflection on old age and death, on the uniqueness of every human being, but above all it is a celebration of a successful life whose richness is expressed less in the material than in the spiritual.

In Lisbon in the late 1990s, two writers meet: the young José in his early 30s, in the midst of a life crisis, and the established José Saramago at the height of his career. Following his debut, the young José is now expected to write a second novel, but he can‘t make any progress and is addicted to alcohol and gambling. He has enormous debts and agrees to write a Saramago biography, even if he finds his books rather long and difficult. Saramago himself is interested in the author of his biography and is ready for interviews. From this relationship, a story is born that mixes reality and fiction. While the main plot is heading towards the announcement of Saramago being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature on 8 October 1998, the young José, true to a statement by the Portuguese intellectual that all writing is autobiographical, is increasingly merging with his subject. Peixoto leads the reader into a cabinet of mirrors from which there is no escape.

Between Bangkok and Las Vegas, José Luís Peixoto returns to non-fiction with an astonishing, layered book of unforeseen relationships, moving from the most intimate account to the most remote and exuberant of descriptions. The Imperfect Path (“O Caminho Imperfeito”) is itself the long journey to a Thailand beyond the normal tourist haunts, exploring lesser known aspects of its culture, society, history and religion, among many others. The sinister discovery of several parcels containing parts of a human body at a post office in Bangkok cause, with unpredictable consequences, his wanderings to become an ordeal. Every episode of this eccentric investigation forms “The Imperfect Path” and, at the same time, constitutes a search for the meaning of travel, writing, and life itself.

In his new novel In Your Belly (“Em Teu Ventre”), José Luís Peixoto addresses one of the defining religious events of the 20th century: the appearance of the Virgin Mary before the eyes of three children in the Portuguese village of Fátima in 1917. After lengthy interviews, the Catholic Church recognized this miracle, turning Fátima into a place of worldwide pilgrimage. But what is behind the phenomenon? Peixoto is interested in people, and so he chooses the ten-year-old Lúcia as the protagonist of his novel. She is the youngest of five children and therefore especially dear to her mother Maria’s heart. Although piously educated, Lúcia is a very headstrong and dreamy girl. For her, the arrival of the Madonna means a sudden end of her childhood and separation from her birth mother. Situated between Christian mysticism and historical research, Em Teu Ventre is a piece of fictional biography of the figure of Sister Lúcia, now revered as a saint in Portugal. Without deciding between reason and superstition, the novel is an ode to both the freedom of faith and the love between mother and child.

The sleepy village of Galveias is home to both long-established families with their rivalries and feuds, like the brothers José and Justino who fell out over their inheritance and haven’t spoken for over fifty years, and newcomers like Isabella, the beautiful Brazilian who runs the bakery that, at night, also functions as a brothel. After the village is struck by some sort of mysterious meteor, the bread starts tasting of sulphur, relationships are reshaped and a series of events is set in motion: it stops raining for nine months; the two brothers are finally reconciled with each other and with their past; Isabella is mistaken for a cork thief and accidentally shot. Then finally a baby girl who doesn’t smell of sulphur is born, and the spell is broken. This beautifully written novel is brimming with astute observations and depictions of human behaviour, of life itself and how it is shaped and changed. The characters that inhabit the captivating microcosm of Galveias inevitably draw the reader in with their intertwining stories that come together as one.

Book (“Livro”) confirms José Luís Peixoto as one of the leading contemporary Portuguese novelists, and also as an author of increasing importance on the international literary scene. This book chooses as its backdrop the extraordinary saga of Portuguese emigration to France, told through a gallery of unforgettable characters and the luminous writing of José Luís Peixoto. From a village in Portugal to Paris, and from popular culture to the most erudite of literary references, are revealed to us the traces of a past that took thousands of Portuguese in search of better conditions and a future of dual nationality. Overwhelming and striking, Book exposes the magnitude of the dream and the rawness, ironic, tender or grotesque, of reality. Through stories of lives, meetings and farewells, the reader is led to a disconcerting ending beyond the frontiers of literature.

What is this permanent itch on the head of every writer in the world? No anti-lice shampoo can soothe it. This widespread affliction makes the headlines of every newspaper and intrigues readers of this and every other book in existence. It is only when the protagonists of children´s books undertake the journey to enter the heads and creative minds of the itching authors that they make a great discovery: there are no lice! The itch that the authors have been feeling are new ideas, stories and characters. The itch won´t be relieved by shampoos or shaving, but it can be treated by expressing the authors´ creativity!
All the Writers of the World Have Their Heads Full of Lice (“Todos os Escritores do Mundo Têm a Cabeça Cheia de Piolhos“) is a beautifully written and illustrated book that focusses on the joy of writing and reading. It sparks young readers´ interest in creativity and upholds imagination as a great gift and important element of human life.

The protagonist of José Luís Peixoto’s first children’s book is a child of the rain. With such a unique mother, so necessary to everyone, he has to learn to share with the world the thing that is most important to him: maternal love. With exceptional tenderness, poetry and disarming simplicity, The Mother That Rained (“A Mãe Que Chovia”) honours and exalts one of nature’s most powerful forces: the unconditional love of mothers.

Against a backdrop of rural Portuguese poverty, a handful of magical characters are living out their destiny: José, a shepherd, who is visited by a devil whispering violent words in his ear; Moises and Elias, Siamese twins joined at the tip of their little fingers; Gabriel, a wise man, who is over one hundred years old; and an unnamed character who sits writing alone in a windowless room.
The characters in Blank Gaze / The Implacable Order of Things (“Nenhum Olhar”) are universal, and they are all at the mercy of fate – their lives are pulled in different directions and sometimes even suffocated and snuffed out… A dark and compelling story with elements of magic realism and Greek tragedy.

Everything in Major Santiago‘s life is about to change. After a traumatic accident that forces him to retire early, he feels the need to leave the capital and return to his childhood home in Benguela. There, his days are filled with memories and reflections on his family‘s history, along with Angola‘s colonial past and the profound social changes that have taken place. But his loneliness ends when Jeremias appears and, months later, Zacarias, an unusual dog and cat, who will accompany him in the new phase of his life. Also living in Benguela is Ofeka, the granddaughter of a soothsayer and caster of spells. When she was a child, her grandmother prophesied that her destiny would be to shine. Now that she is a beautiful woman with a successful career, her dead grandmother sends her a spirit to help her achieve her fantastical destiny. And Ofeka will never be alone again, because the impertinent spirit Olegário doesn‘t shy away from commenting even on her love life. When Santiago and Ofeka cross paths, they do not realise the extent to which their lives are intertwined, nor the unexpected revelations that await them. When the time comes, they will have to make a choice that will change their destiny and teach them that everything is connected. Or should be. And that what must be is connected only by words, spoken, written or transmitted. In clear prose punctuated by the magic of African traditions and a delightful sense of humour, Pepetela’s Everything-Is-Connected (»Tudo-Está-Ligado«) takes us on a journey from the establishment of the ancient kingdoms in the Central Plateau to present-day Angola, exploring little-known episodes in the country‘s history.

In His Excellency, R.I.P. (“Sua Excelência, de Corpo Presente”) an African dictator lies in a coffin in an enormous hall. He is dead, but sees, hears and thinks. Stretched out, imprisoned in a body without life, but in possession of his intellectual faculties, all he can do to pass the time is recall his life experiences with many of those who come to pay their last respects, among them several relatives, the first lady (and his other wives and mistresses), his numerous children and state dignitaries. In remembering his life, the path that led him to being president and his many years as head of state, he reveals us the meanderings of political power, the nepotism that consumed him and the various abuses allowed to those who supported him. And since he is aware of everything that goes on around him, and it is very difficult for a dictator to stop dictating, His Excellency not only speculates on those present and their political interests, but also tries to guess their thoughts and machinations. For even when dead, he will not leave his succession in the hands of others, instead trying to meddle with the help of his one-eyed spy, who is as faithful to him in death as he was in life.

Luanda, 1995: On the run from the horrors of civil war, thirteen-year-old Himba attempts to survive as a street child. After being raped and hurt, a well-intentioned local resident accommodates her and her friend Kassule at a church-run project. But soon Himba decides: You have always to fight for your own well-being. Nearly 20 years later, the growing globalization presents a new challenge for the young Sofia: Can her little restaurant withstand the economic competition? As she uses the death of her business partner to secretly appropriate her share, her greed will cost her the close relationship with her brother: Deeply disappointed by the machinations of Sofia, Diego turns away from his beloved sister. In If the Past Had No Wings (“Se o passado não tivesse asas”) Pepetela presents two strong female characters in two interwoven storylines. But the violence of war and the brutality of the subsequent struggle for survival are not easily shaken off. On the way from street kid to businesswoman, during Luanda’s development from theatre of war to cosmopolitan business centre, the past has grown wings.

Heitor has always been shy, and when his latest girlfriend dumps him, he rents a run-down hut on the outskirts of Luanda to heal his broken heart. Listening to a particular radio programme, Heitor soon becomes addicted to the charming voice of its presenter Marisa. Through fate, they meet and fall in love. But Marisa is married… Featuring quirky and loveable characters, The Shy One and the Women (“O tímido e as mulheres “) is not only a love story but also an entertaining portrait of today’s Luanda.

Set in the heart of Africa at the beginning of the 17^th century, Pepetela’s novel In the South. The Sombreiro (“À Sul. O Sombreiro”) is full of adventure, political intrigues and magical elements. While the ruthless governor Cerveira founds the town of Benguela, the black native Carlos Rocha flees to the Savannah and stays with one of Africa’s fiercest warrior tribes to avoid a terrible fate.

The Highlands and the Steppes (“O Planalto e a Estepe “) tells a true story of great passion and suffering, scarred by a love nourished by hope and waiting. When Júlio is sent from Angola to Portugal to study medicine, he gets involved in clandestine communist cells. In Moscow, he falls in love with the Mongolian girl Sarangerel. But politics and tradition conspire against them, and Sarangerel is taken back to Mongolia. Will they ever meet again?

After this successful foray into crime fiction, Pepetela returns with the ambitious and powerful novel The Predators (“Os predadores”) that attempts to get to the heart of Angola’s tragic recent history. The novel ostensibly revolves around the character of Vladimiro Caposso, an unscrupulous and opportunistic businessman, charting his rise and fall over the last thirty years. Going back to the last days of Portuguese colonial rule, we find Caposso aged 18, working in a colonist’s grocer’s store.  When the Portuguese leave, he takes over the store and begins his rise to wealth and power first through the heady days of the transition to independence, then becoming a corrupt bureaucrat as Angola joins the Soviet bloc, and onwards as an entrepreneur into the unrestrained capitalism and social upheaval of the 1990s, the civil war ever simmering in the background. The action stretches from tribal herdsmen’s villages seemingly untouched by civilisation, through Luanda’s decaying urban sprawl, to life on campus in the United States for an Angolan exchange student. Caposso is the link that binds these disparate worlds together, his actions impacting on the lives of every one of the characters.

Following the strongly-drawn characters from the shanty towns to the mansions of the nouveau-riche with an engrossing plot, passionately written and keen to explain, there is no more readable introduction to Angola and its recent past.

In Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent (“Jaime Bunda, agente secreto”), the author has chosen the fat, unlucky trainee at Luanda’s secret police, as the protagonist of a crime story set in Luanda, where it is easier to find a Kalashnikov than an honest official. Jaime Bunda becomes a credible guide on an anything but touristy trail through the city of Luanda. He appears again in the following novel, Jaime Bunda and the Death of the American (“Jaime Bunda e a morte do americano”). Now he has to clear up the murder of an American engineer. Pepetela pokes fun at the Americans for their seemingly pathological anxiety of terror attacks as well as mocking the antiamericanism of the Angolans. The tensions within this country, which lives in constant political insecurity since its independence, are continuously present in Pepetela’s work.

Lisbon 1961. Aware that the secret police are watching them, four young Angolans discuss their plans for a utopian homeland free from Portuguese rule. When war breaks out, they flee to France and must decide whether they will return home to join the fight. Two remain in exile and two return to Angola to become guerilla fighters, barely escaping capture over the course of the brutal fourteen-year war. Reunited in the capital of Luanda, the old friends face independence with their confidence shaken and struggle to build a new society free of the corruption and violence of colonial rule. The Utopian Generation (»Geração da Utopia«) is widely considered in the Portuguese-speaking world an essential novel of African decolonization.

Pepetela’s career as a writer started during the war for independence, when he wrote his first novel, Mayombe, published in 1980, in which he describes the conflicts in Angola’s fight for liberation. His novels are mainly set against the backdrop of important historical events during almost a century of Angolan history. An essential theme of his work is the greatness and strength of past cultures still existing in modern Angola.

The ironical, merciless portrait of the country’s capital Luanda in Kianda’s Desire (“O desejo de Kianda”) shows a post-colonial Angola worn down and devastated by four decades of colonial and civil war.

What happens when Juan introduces Aína to his singular stray dog? Kaidú, a non-humanised companion, wins her over at first sight and reduces the distance between the three of them. She recognises with surprise her desire to spend more time with him; in a short time, passion multiplies. Can you be unfaithful with a dog? Juan, who is unaware of this secret, sets off on a journey and leaves Kaidú in her care. Alone with the dog, trapped in an ambiguity and a newly discovered sense of happiness, Aína lets herself be carried to the entrance of a parallel world. The modulations of nature are hidden in vital enigmas. Beyond all moral considerations, the protagonist finds a reason in the animalistic emotionality of this relationship.
Behind an intriguing triangular love story, Kaidú stands outside the limits of a hierarchically ordered universe. The author of the extraordinary “Don’t Know if I Should Get Married or Buy Myself a Dog” resolves the question of that novel by exploring, with the subtlety that is already her trademark style, the unexpected forms that relationships can take.

The Great Plan (“El Gran Plan”) is read as three major plans that fail: One of love-passion, one of flight-paradise, the other aesthetic-political. They are human plans, concerning issues that affect us all, and which, for being so grandiose and probably incompatible with the banality of existence, fail.

A man and a woman without formal ties or obligations towards each other live together in a house. He abducted her from a safe and schematic life; she went with him. They are united by something stronger than love. In the Atacama desert, the woman, along with an archaeologist, an astronomer, an anthropologist and a film director, is staying in a hotel that serves as their operational base. The director has filmed the light like no one before and is determined to commit suicide so that his film will be seen by a wider audience. In Venice, the woman’s father followed the footsteps of Ezra Pound. After the father’s death, she rescues his marginal notes which tried to clarify how the ground-breaking poet was seized by the longing to preserve order ravaged by war.

The Great Plan joins three moments of a life in a master pass. With an electrifying narrative intelligence, the new novel by Paula Perez Alonso ends with an unexpected and beautiful twist.

In her novel, the bestselling Argentinean author Paula Perez Alonso once again proves herself a sensitive and incorruptible observer of society. Fragile (“Frágil”) is set in present-day Buenos Aires, where the two protagonists meet in the city’s lively centre. When he discovers Celeste at the crossroads of Corrientes and Diagonal, Bruno is immediately fascinated: a girl on stilts dressed in neon colours handing out flyers from the Centro de la Liberación to passers-by. He follows her and they start talking. As they get to know each other better, Celeste manages to confront Bruno with his memories and his life story, which he had successfully repressed. The young man earns a living as a computer specialist, spending his free time walking the exact same paths through the city every night. He lives the life of a loner without any contact to his parents and grandmother, who tortured him psychologically as a child and broke his will. Celeste tears Bruno out of his apparently ordered and normal life, and he senses that she can help him. Celeste too senses that she touches something in Bruno. She wants to convince him that it’s good to lose control over oneself every now and then. She suggests sex, but on their third real date he takes Celeste along on one of his night tours instead, and the two of them watch people through their lighted windows: people who are alone, people who have nothing to say to each other and all watch the same TV shows. Celeste recognises one of these individuals: a man who begs in the town centre and obviously manages to maintain a meagre sense of dignity. By chance, she and Bruno meet him later in a restaurant and get into conversation. A few days later, Celeste reads in the newspaper that the man has been murdered – and Bruno has vanished…

In Fragile, Paula Perez Alonso steers two unusual and fundamentally diffe-rent personalities up against each other, prompting dramatic consequences. The book is a startling revelation of the fractures and identity problems of today’s Argentinean society.

Don’t Know if I Should Get Married or Buy Myself a Dog (“No sé si casarme o comprarme un perro”) is a hypnotic and demanding novel which from the outset was read fervently by a vast audience in both Latin America and Spain: readers, captivated by its raw expressiveness, were transformed into hard-core fans. Back from a long journey, Juana is alone and knows it is not good for man and woman to be alone. She tries in vain to reconnect with people she used to know, but the gallery of characters she meets leads her to put out a classified ad: Wanted: a man who can compete with an ideal dog for the love of a woman. We are about to enter the tormented world of a young woman and her intense affections, trying to survive desperately by clinging to a humorous inquiry. But real life rarely respects humor.

Calbuco, a title that takes up the name of the small island in southern Chile where the author grew up, is an epistolary novel composed of letters that Romina Pistolas addresses to figures from her past and present, people who have marked her life and whose memory returns to question her. In these intertwined voices, a portrait emerges of a town where patriarchy and gender abuse predominate, but where networks of solidarity are also forged between women who resist and accompany each other.
The work reflects on memory, sisterhood and the traumas inherited from generation to generation, while portraying the experiences of the province and the ways of inhabiting deep Chile. With an agile and beautiful prose, Romina Pistolas weaves communicating vessels between the intimate and the collective, between the written life and the lived life, confirming the strength of an author who bursts forth with a clear and singular voice.

“My first day as a stripper wasn’t much different from the first day of school. On both occasions, I pretended to be braver than I really was.” This is the existential gamble of Romina, the protagonist of this story: to act with a courage that isn’t there until it is obtained.
Carmen, or How I Got into the Industry of Dancing Naked (»Carmen. O cómo me inicié en el negocio de bailar sin ropa«) is a novel about daring, in spite of fear. The fear of leaving home, the familiar, the safe, the solid ground. And yet, having the courage to step through the door into the unknown; traveling to the other side of the world to start over, discovering friends where they weren’t expected. The courage to dive into the water, fully clothed, to reach the other shore, to get, somehow, to the other side.
With a fresh voice, agile prose, and a lot of humour, through this autofiction, Romina Pistolas tells us in the first person of an experience rarely seen in literature: how she started in the business of dancing without clothes.

Vidal Porto’s Sodomite (“Sodomita”) takes us back to the 17th century, when homosexuality was a crime sometimes punished by penal transportation to Brazil. Mixing historical facts with wild fable, the author discusses current issues without ever losing his ironic verve.
The fourth novel by Alexandre Vidal Porto, who is known for his clear style in dealing with contemporary issues, goes back several centuries to tell the saga of Delgado, a guitar player from Évora in Portugal who arrived in Salvador in 1669, deported for the crime of sodomy – a code for homosexuality.
In Brazil, with his past erased, Delgado reinvents himself as a merchant, enters into a sham marriage and throws himself into carnal delights with the beautiful young men who cross his path.
Mixing a made-up archaic Portuguese with today’s spoken language, Sodomita explores current-day issues – from the secularisation of the state to the vestiges of slavery – in an unusual and amusing guise.

Up to what point is it possible to hide from oneself? In Chlorine (“Cloro”), a family tragedy undermines the life of an affluent homosexual in the closet. This is a small study on the irresistible force of sexuality. Constantino is a dead narrator. In the limbo where he finds himself, he revisits decisive facts of his life– up to his unexpected death at age fifty. A well-established lawyer in São Paulo, he learned in childhood that “being a faggot was no good.” From an early age, he concealed his desires and took on a heterosexual persona. He married his teenage sweetheart Debora and fathered two children. A tragic accident destroys the fragile balance which he maintained, and he is suddenly confronted with his homosexuality. He starts to lead a double life, has sexual encounters with men and falls for Emílio, a diplomat he meets in Brasília. Through the voices of Constantino and his family and friends, Alexandre Vidal Porto presents a clear narrative that is needed in times like ours—when to be oneself is often an act of courage.

Sergio Y. Goes to America (“Sergio Y. Vai à América”) Armando is one of the best therapists in São Paulo. After a trip to New York, his 17-year-old patient Sergio decides to quit therapy abruptly. His short explanation to Armando is that he has finally “found his way to happiness” and must pursue it. For years Armando is left with no clue of what happened to his patient, until he learns that he is living a fulfilled life in New York – as Sandra. Weeks later, however, he is shocked to read about Sergio’s unexpected death. Trying to get to the root of both Sergio and Sandra’s life, Armando starts investigating on his own.
A surprising and inspirational tale about the importance of seeking happiness.

In the second edition of his debut novel Matias in the City (“Matias na Cidade”), completely revised by the author, Alexandre Vidal Porto shows us a man trapped in the Kafkaesque nightmare of everyday life, and his desperate – albeit fruitless – attempt to free himself.
Matias Grappeggia is almost fifty years old. He’s married, but lonely; healthy, but a hypochondriac; a womaniser, but unable to connect. With such a predictable life, you would not expect this successful lawyer to run any risks.
However, when Matias finds himself on the verge of an amorous-religious revelation, he realises that he has to make a definitive choice. Travelling around the city of São Paulo for four days, the lawyer relives an important part of his memories, but also uncovers his innermost desires.
The search for connection, love and identification with the other is the theme of this first novel by Alexandre Vidal Porto, originally published in 2005 and now with a second edition completely revised by the author.