A weightless person

Los ingrávidos

This book is a Los Angeles Times Book Award winner. Luiselli has also won the American Book Award, been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was selected for the "Bogotá 39" list of young Latin American writers.
"Faces emerge from the crowd; / petals on damp, black branches." A few unrelated souls, seemingly by chance, encounter each other and discover the essence of life and literature. Reading this book is like witnessing a series of overlapping memories, which, like those suddenly appearing faces, appear as fleetingly yet eternally as petals.
The novel unfolds across three time periods, three intertwined stories that ultimately merge into one. In Mexico City, a young mother writes about her youth in New York. In New York, a translator desperately tries to publish the works of an unknown Mexican poet, Gilberto Irwin. In Philadelphia, Gilberto Irwin, gradually losing his sight due to cataracts, recounts his friendship with the poet Lorca and the last light in his eyes...
❈ Writing is about saving people and lives trapped in confined spaces. This novel is not only about a woman's daily life and inner world, but also an ode to writers: every writer's voice and style inevitably draws from one or more authors of past eras. Countless ordinary lives are immortalized and reborn in writing and words.
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"The Weightless Man" is partly autobiographical. The protagonist is a female writer living in the United States. She lives with her husband, a daughter, and a son, struggling to balance family responsibilities with her writing. The first half of the novel describes her life before marriage and her interactions with her family after marriage. The heroine wants to publish a book by the little-known Mexican poet Gilberto Irving. To convince the editor of Irving's stature and significance, she even forges a translation of his poetry by another famous poet. One day, I stumble upon a plant in a pot in the building where Irving lived. I suddenly realize that this pot matches the one Irving had described in his letters, so I take it home. From then on, I felt a mysterious connection with the poet Irving, who lived half a century ago...
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This novel, told from multiple perspectives, allows us to see the story of a young woman, a smooth-talking con man, and a young mother and wife, which will keep readers captivated. Valeria Luiselli is a precociously talented and original author.
—Francisco Goldman
This book poetically considers love, mortality, ghosts, and the desire to transform the debris of our humanity into art, to be redeemed by creation. Valeria Luiselli's voice is startling and unique. Her work urgently demands our attention.
—Laura van den Berg
In The Weightless Man, Luiselli not only writes beautiful sentences but also constantly reexamines and breaks the conventions of the novel, making her an exciting and indispensable voice on the Latin American literary landscape.
—Los Angeles Times
The greatest beauty of her writing is witnessing how conflicting stories collapse or blend and merge into an unexpected whole.
—Los Angeles Review of Books
It's filled with dense psychological action, laser-cut language, mixed with fiction, jagged storylines, and puzzles.
—The Wall Street Journal

2021-01-15

上海人民出版社

Century Wenjing

264

9787208167223