confusion

Insensatez

History and reality are filled with madness and violence. How can we resist insanity?
A heavyweight writer in Latin America's post-"literary boom" era, "Kafka on drugs"
An absurd black comedy and a thought-provoking realistic fable. Recommended by Bolaño, James Wood, George Saunders, and Junot Díaz. Synopsis: A sharp-tongued writer, in exile abroad, inexplicably finds himself hired by a church to edit an 1,100-page oral archive. This archive records and exposes the horrific massacre of local indigenous people by the army ten years ago, including many heartbreaking testimonies from the victims.
While editing, he was constantly captivated by the testimonies, words as rich and rich as Vallejo's poetry. From the victim's confession, "There's a piece missing from my brain," to the family's lament, "Those houses, they're sad, because no one's inside them anymore..." And finally, the most poignant line, "We all know who the murderer is." His consciousness was gradually consumed. Like a lamb headed for sacrifice, his morbid delusions sank him into a state of confusion, until he could no longer distinguish between history and reality, inevitably identifying with both the perpetrator and the victim.
He was, however, in real danger. After all, the perpetrators of the Holocaust still ruled that unnamed Latin American country.
🎭Editor's Recommendation
1. A representative work by a heavyweight writer in the post-Latin American "literary boom" era, highly recommended by many famous European and American scholars.
★ Winner of the Manuel Rojas Medal, one of the highest awards in Spanish-language literature.
★ Moya's works are not only popular in his home country of El Salvador, but also have won numerous international reputations and have been highly recommended by famous European and American artists such as Roberto Bolaño, James Wood, Junot Díaz, and George Saunders.
★ He made Salvadoran literature have a place in the world literary landscape.
★"Unhinged" is the author's first novel translated into 12 languages ​​including English. It was shortlisted for the American Best Translated Book Award. The author's manuscript has been collected by the Cervantes Institute in Madrid.
2. This is an absurd black comedy that provides a dizzying reading experience between hilariousness and unease.
★ Moya has a strong writing style and is known as "Kafka on drugs" and "the Thomas Bernhard of Central America."
★ The narrator, with his endless stream of words and sometimes happy and sometimes sad defense, draws the reader into a vortex of words intertwined with absurdity and fear, causing him to fall into the abyss of crazy consciousness at an accelerated rate, swinging between absurd laughter and painful anxiety. This will be a rare reading experience.
3. A thought-provoking real-life fable that bears witness to history while also asking how we can resist insanity in today's world, which is also rife with madness and violence.
Central America, with its unique history, remains one of the most violent regions in the world. The novel, originally titled "We All Know Who the Murderer Is!", is set against the backdrop of the atrocities committed by the military against the people during the 36-year Guatemalan Civil War.
★ With his master pen that "knows how to narrate fear best", Moya not only vividly displays the barbarity and madness in the history of Central America, but also deeply depicts the universal conflicts and mysteries of the human soul. It can be called an exquisite realistic fable that is thought-provoking.
🎭Celebrity Recommendation: (Moya's) writing seems to emanate from the depths of his homeland's volcanoes. ... His sharp humor, like a Buster Keaton film, acts as a ticking time bomb, enough to destabilize those idiots (nationalists) whose fragile sense of stability is unchecked, ready to hang him in the public square. And really, for a true writer, I can't imagine a higher honor than this.
—Roberto Bolaño is a writer with a strong style. In his powerful novels, he seizes a fictional concept with a strong and ironic tone, and then keeps squeezing it, squeezing it again and again.
—James Wood, literary critic and author of The Loom of Fiction He seems like Kafka on drugs.
—Yascha Hoffmann Horacio Castellanos Moya is one of the most inventive novelists writing today. His exploration of the human condition, rooted in a profound understanding of the mysteries of politics and the mind, is endlessly captivating and a universal treasure.
—Christopher Merrill, Director of the United Nations International Writing Programme: "Horacio's novels are key to understanding Central American realities and the relevance of literature today. He is one of the most relevant living writers of our time, with a profound understanding of human conflict and contradiction. We are very proud to have him as a member of the Master of Creative Writing program in Spain."
—Ana Merino, Director of the Spanish Creative Writing Program at the University of Iowa "I highly recommend this exceptional work by Horacio Castellanos Moya: In an unnamed country, a writer takes on the perilous task of editing a report documenting military atrocities. It's a descent into hell, but also a story about what it means to be human."
—Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Its success depends on the narrator's acerbic comedy, dark and divisive voice.
—Aaron Shulman Moya has the rare gift of writing fast-paced novels that are both powerful and substantial—they feel grand, yet formally beautiful and dramatic… After reading this work’s astonishing conclusion, you’ll return to the beginning to marvel at his mastery and insight.
—George Saunders, Booker Prize winner and author of Lincoln in the Bardo A masterful morality tale that feels like Kafka has gone to Latin America for his material.
-Russell Banks Like Kafka, Moya uses a satirical eye to focus on how bureaucrats become accomplices of dictators...Writing from absurdity to fear and back to absurdity, this has some similar qualities to "The Castle".
—Tommy Wallach, PBS NewsHour
Like the late Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, the narrator in Unhinged is “like a snake, he hisses and spits poison,” but Moya is able to twist Bernhard’s long sentences to his advantage.
——The Millions
Moya turned anxiety into an art form, an act of defiance. … He put El Salvador on the literary map, giving it an international presence independent of the headlines.
--"nation"
A measure of a novel's survival must be its political relevance, and it's no coincidence that the recurring booms in Latin American literature are closely tied to the region's bottomless pits of war and conflict. ... As a stylist, Moya isn't particularly like Bolaño, but as storytellers, they are very similar. In its structure and length, "Unhinged" recalls "Chilean Nights" or "Distant Stars"... All three works cede narrative control to an increasingly unreliable witness to political violence who, through some literary ambition or quirk of academic research, knows too much.
—The New York Sun

2022-05-01

花城出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

168

9787536096806