Translations, Conjunto Music and Lit, New Theater

Recent Books In Translation

The Third Reich
Roberto Bolaño
translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
November, 2011

[from the publisher]

On vacation with his girlfriend, Ingeborg, the German war games champion Udo Berger returns to a small town on the Costa Brava where he spent the summers of his childhood. Soon they meet another vacationing German couple, Charly and Hanna, who introduce them to a band of locals—the Wolf, the Lamb, and El Quemado—and to the darker side of life in a resort town.

Late one night, Charly disappears without a trace, and Udo’s well-ordered life is thrown into upheaval; while Ingeborg and Hanna return to their lives in Germany, he refuses to leave the hotel. Soon he and El Quemado are enmeshed in a round of Third Reich, Udo’s favorite World War II strategy game, and Udo discovers that the game’s consequences may be all too real.

Written in 1989 and found among Roberto Bolaño’s papers after his death, The Third Reich is a stunning exploration of memory and violence. Reading this quick, visceral novel, we see a world-class writer coming into his own—and exploring for the first time the themes that would define his masterpieces The Savage Detectives and 2666.

The Potter's Field
Andrea Camilleri
translated from Italian by Stephen Satarelli
Penguin
September, 2011

[from the publisher]

Witty and entertaining, the Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri - a master of the Italian detective story - have become favorites of mystery fans everywhere. In this latest installment, an unidentified corpse is found near Vigàta, a town known for its soil rich with potter's clay. Meanwhile, a woman reports the disappearance of her husband, a Colombian man with Sicilian origins who turns out to be related to a local mobster. Then Inspector Montalbano remembers the story from the Bible-Judas's betrayal, the act of remorse, and the money for the potter's field, where those of unknown or foreign origin are to be buried-and slowly, through myriad betrayals, finds his way to the solution to the crime.

[from Publishers Weekly]

Camilleri’s clever 13th Inspector Montalbano mystery (after 2010’s The Track of Sand) opens with the discovery of an unidentified body, cut into 30 pieces, in a remote field near the Sicilian town of Vigàta, known for soil rich with potter’s clay. Montalbano, who has a knack for finding gallows humor in even the most grotesque situations, believes the hacked-up body signifies the 30 pieces of silver Judas was paid for his betrayal. Later, Dolores Alfano, a stunning woman whose skin has “the faint scent of cinnamon,” reports that her husband, a sailor with ties to a local mobster, is missing. That Mimi Augello, one of Mantalbano’s most trusted inspectors, is in a permanent rage complicates matters. As usual, Montalbano wants to wrap up both cases quickly so he can get back to his real work—sleeping, eating, drinking, and dealing with his long-distance girlfriend, Livia.

1222
Anne Holt
translated from Norwegian by Marlaine Delargy
Scribner
December, 2011

[from the publisher]

From Norway’s bestselling female crime writer comes a suspenseful locked-room mystery set in an isolated hotel in Norway, where guests stranded during a monumental snowstorm start turning up dead. A train on its way to the northern reaches of Norway derails during a massive blizzard, 1,222 meters above sea level. The passengers abandon the train for a nearby hotel, centuries-old and practically empty, except for the staff. With plenty of food and shelter from the storm, the passengers think they are safe, until one of them is found dead the next morning. With no sign of rescue, and the storm continuing to rage, retired police inspector Hanne Wilhelmsen is asked to investigate. Paralysed by a bullet lodged in her spine, Hanne has no desire to get involved. But she is slowly coaxed back into her old habits as her curiosity and natural talent for observation force her to take an interest in the passengers and their secrets. When another body turns up, Hanne realizes that time is running out, and she must act fast before panic takes over. Complicating things is the presence of a mysterious guest, who had travelled in a private rail car at the end of the train and was evacuated first to the top floor of the hotel. No one knows who the guest is, or why armed guards are needed, but it is making everyone uneasy. Hanne has her suspicions, but she keeps them to herself. Trapped in her wheelchair, trapped by the storm, and now trapped with a killer, Hanne must fit the pieces of the puzzle together before the killer strikes again.

[from the Washington Post]
It must be spooky in Scandinavia, but Holt, Norway’s best-selling female crime writer and a former minister of justice, has a goofy streak that changes the tone of this beguiling book. There are lots of helicopters toward the end and cops running around and worldwide implications (the only weak part is a contrived conversation about America as a world power). The fun goes on in the lobby, where peculiar people conspire, and just outside the hotel, where people hide corpses, or try to. I really loved this snowbound book.







The Fat Years
Chan Koonchung, translated from Chinese by Michael S. Duke
Doubleday/Talese
January, 2012

[from the publisher]

Banned in China, this controversial and politically charged novel tells the story of the search for an entire month erased from official Chinese history.

Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one could care less—except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that have possessed the Chinese nation. When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn—not only about their leaders, but also about their own people—stuns them to the core. It is a message that will astound the world.

A kind of Brave New World reflecting the China of our times, The Fat Years is a complex novel of ideas that reveals all too chillingly the machinations of the postmodern totalitarian state, and sets in sharp relief the importance of remembering the past to protect the future.

[from The Observer]

Sitting in the comfortable west, it is easy for critics of China to be censorious about the way so many people accept the rush for wealth accumulation and close an eye to the regime's political record and its human rights abuses. But the crude fact is that, after a terrible century and a quarter up to 1978, in which China went through the worst protracted experience of any nation in history, the present era may, indeed, seem like the "fat years".

To touch on so many issues, either directly or by implication, in such a compelling narrative is a triumph, abetted by an excellent translation by Michael Duke. One can only hope that Chan, who was born in Shanghai and raised in Hong Kong, continues to write about the China of today from his current vantage point in Beijing. That will, in its way, be a test of whether the warnings of The Fat Years come true. We can only hope not.

All Yours
Claudia Piñiero
Translated from Spanish by Miranda France
Bitter Lemon Press
January, 2012

[from the publisher]

Inés is convinced that every wife is bound to be betrayed one day, so she is not surprised to find a note in her husband Ernesto’s briefcase with a heart smeared in lipstick crossed by the words “All Yours”. Following him to a park in Buenos Aires on a rainy winter evening, she witnesses a violent quarrel between her husband and another woman. The woman collapses; Ernesto sinks her body in a nearby lake.

When Ernesto becomes a suspect in the case Inés provides him with an alibi. After all, hatred can bring people together as urgently as love. But Ernesto cannot bring his sexual adventures to an end, so Inés concocts a plan for revenge from which there is no return.

Claudia Piñeiro was a journalist, playwright and television scriptwriter and in 1992 won the prestigious Pléyade journalism award. She has more recently turned to fiction and is the author of literary crime novels that are all bestsellers in Latin America and have been translated into four languages. Thursday Night Widows won the Clarin Prize for fiction and is her first title to be available in English.

Conjunto Music Festival Schedule and Call for "Conjunto Lit"

A note from Juan Tejeda of the Conjunto Music Festival:
Camaradas: just wanted to send you the official schedule for the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center's 31st Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival en San Antonio 2012 which will take place from May 15-20 at the Guadalupe Theatre and Rosedale Park. We hope that you and your familia can be with us in May. The new winning poster design for 2012 will be released in early March. I'm also looking for some literature on conjunto music: poetry, short stories, articles (academic and otherwise), etc., for possible publication in the TCF Magazine this year. E-mail me your favorite conjunto story to juantejeda@sbcglobal.net Please spread the palabra and schedule to your friends. Gracias. Juan

GUADALUPE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER

PRESENTS THE 31^ST ANNUAL

TEJANO CONJUNTO FESTIVAL EN SAN ANTONIO 2012

Tentative Schedule

Tuesday, May 15/Guadalupe Theatre/10am-12pm/Free for Seniors

Seniors Conjunto Dance

Los Conjunto Kingz de Flavio Longoria

with Rachel Longoria

Tuesday, May 15/Guadalupe Theatre/7pm/Free Admission

The Making of Juanito’s Lab

Producers/Directors Guillermina Zabala and Enrique Lopetegui

discuss the making of Juanito’s Lab, a new documentary film

about Juanito Castillo, the 22-year-old blind button accordionist

and musical wiz-kid konjunto jazz loko karnal de San Anto.

Some footage from the still-in-the-making documentary will be shown.

Wednesday, May 16/Guadalupe Theatre/7:30-11pm/$10 pre-sale $15 at the door

New Directions in Conjunto Music

7:30 Nick Gaitán and The Umbrella Man (Houston)

8:30 Piñata Protest (San Antonio)

9:30 La Santa Cecilia (Los Ángeles)

Thursday, May 17/Guadalupe Theatre/6:30-9pm/$65 & $100**

Special 31st Annual Gala Celebration Dinner & Baile

Honoring the Inductees into the Conjunto Music Hall of Fame

Best of the 30^th Annual Tejano Conjunto Festival 2011 CD Release Party

8:15 Bernardo y sus Compadres

9:00 Rick De la Rosa y Los D Boyz

Friday, May 18/Rosedale Park/6pm-12am/$15 per person*

5:30 Opening Ceremonies/Poster Contest Exhibit & Awards

Puro Conjunto Pesado: Dos de Houston, Corpitos y el Valle

6:00 Impozzible (Houston)

7:00 Los Tremendos Cinco (Corpus Christi)

8:00 Los Monarcas de Pete y Mario Díaz (Houston)

9:00 Los Fantasmas del Valle (Mercedes)

10:00 Boni Mauricio y Los Máximos (Corpus Christi)

11:00 Los Dos Gilbertos (Edinburg)

Saturday, May 19/Rosedale Park/1pm-12am/$18 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado: Hecho en Tejas

1:00 Student Showcase: Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center * Conjunto Heritage Taller

Conjunto Palo Alto/Palo Alto College * Estrellas de Acordeón/Houston Accordion Performers Palmview High School/La Joya Independent School District

3:00 La Familia Mauricio (Corpus Christi)

3:30 Crystal n The Crew (Pasadena)

4:10 Los Conjunto Kidz (Victoria)

5:00 Susan Torres y Conjunto Clemencia (Austin)

6:00 Conjunto Prestigio (Dallas)

7:00 Edgar Vásquez y sus Muchachos (Laredo)

8:00 Rubén De la Cruz y su Conjunto (Edcouch)

9:00 Joel Guzmán Sarah Fox y Conjuntazzo (Austin)

10:00 Rio Jordán featuring Juanito Castillo (San Antonio)

11:00 Albert Zamora (Corpus Christi)

Sunday, May 20/Rosedale Park/1-11pm/$18 per person*

Puro Conjunto Pesado: Así se baila en San Anto

1:00 Los Padrinos

1:40 Los Hermanos De León

2:40 Eddie “Lalo” Torres y Anita Paiz y su Conjunto

special presentation by Salvador García y Los Pavos Reales

3:40 Lobo IV

4:40 Eva Ybarra y su Conjunto

5:40 Max Baca y Los Texmaniacs

special presentation by Dwayne Verheyden

6:40 Santiago Jiménez Jr. y su Conjunto

7:40 Bene Medina y el Conjunto Águila

special presentation by Nick Villarreal

8:40 Mingo Saldívar y sus Tremendos Cuatro Espadas

9:40 Flaco Jiménez y su Conjunto

10:30 Accordion Conjunto Jam

WORKSHOPS

Saturday, May 19/Guadalupe Theatre/9-10:30am/$40

Accordion Tuning, Maintenance & Repair Workshop

Tim Schofield, Hohner Accordion Repair and Parts Supervisor,
will teach you how to tune the reeds of your accordion and
maintain it in tip-top playing shape. Accordion tuning kits
will be available for purchase. For registration, call 210.271.3151.

Saturday, May 19/Guadalupe Theatre/10:30am-12:30pm/$40

Button Accordion & Bajo Sexto Workshops

Master Button Accordion and Bajo Sexto maestros Joel Guzmán

and Max Baca will conduct this concurrent two-hour workshop.

Basic chords and scales will be explored, along with the playing and

accompaniment of different conjunto rhythms. The two workshops will

come together at the end for an impromptu performance and conjunto jam.

For registration, call 210.271.3151.

* 3-Day Rosedale All-Events Pass

$35 GCAC Members

$40 Non-Members

** $65 Conjunto Music Hall of Fame Dinner & Baile,

plus, a Best of the Tejano Conjunto Festival CD and TCF 2012 Magazine

$100 Conjunto Music Hall of Fame Dinner & Baile,

plus, a 3-Day Rosedale All-Events Pass,

a Best of the Tejano Conjunto Festival CD and a TCF 2012 Magazine

For reservations call 210.271.3151. Limited Seating

For info, 210.271.3151

www.guadalupeculturalarts.org

Water & Power

BETRAYAL A horrid double cross propels two brothers headlong into desire and revenge. A tale of the violence and corruption of L.A. politics and of ruthless ambition. Dark, hilarious, political, satirical and fearless. Water & Power Written by Richard Montoya for Culture Clash Directed by Phil Luna and Anthony J. Garcia March 8-25 TH., FRI., and SAT. 7:30 p.m. $20 gen. $17 stu/sen COMADRES!!!! 12 tix - $12 each 2-4-1 Thursdays when you ask for discount (off of general admission). Su Teatro Performing and Cultural Arts Center 721 Santa Fe Dr. Denver, CO 80204 303-296-0219 www.suteatro.org

Gearing Up For Spring - photo by Flo

That's it for the exciting, cold, and wet month of February. Later.

Fiction in Translation - Part II

The second half of my list of recent crime fiction translated into English. Part I can be found here.
[publisher and author blurbs]


The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Putnam

From acclaimed and best-selling author Arturo Pérez-Reverte comes the fifth adventure of Captain Alatriste, "the brooding, charismatic hero of his wildly successful Spanish swashbuckling novels" (The New York Times).

In the cosmopolitan world of seventeenth-century Madrid, with its posh theaters and gleaming palaces, Captain Alatriste and his protégé, Íñigo, are fish out of water. But the king and court are keeping Alatriste on retainer—he has proved useful in the past. As a veteran with no other source of income, Alatriste chooses to remain, even as his “employment” brings him uncomfortably close to old enemies. Íñigo, now a young man and veteran of the Hundred Years War, chooses to remain with his master and press his ill-fated romance with the beautiful but sinister Angélica de Alquézar. Alatriste, for his part, begins an affair with the famous—and famously beautiful— actress María de Castro, and discovers that the competition for her favors may be much more dangerous than he’d bargained for, especially when Alatriste and Íñigo become unwilling participants in a court conspiracy that could lead them both to the gallows.


Thursday Night Widows
Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Miranda France
Bitter Lemon

Three bodies lie at the bottom of a swimming pool in a gated country estate near Buenos Aires. It’s Thursday night at the magnificent Scaglia house. Behind the locked gates, shielded from the crime, poverty and filth of the people on the streets, the Scaglias and their friends hide lives of infidelity, alcoholism, and abusive marriage. Claudia Piñeiro’s novel eerily foreshadowed a criminal case that generated a scandal in the Argentine media. But this is more than a story about crime. The suspense is a by-product of Piñeiro's hand at crafting a psychological portrait of a professional class that lives beyond its means and leads secret lives of deadly stress and despair. It takes place during the post 9/11 economic melt-down in Argentina but it’s a universal story that will resonate among credit-crunched readers of today.

Claudia Piñeiro was a journalist, playwright and television scriptwriter and in 1992 won the prestigious Pléyade journalism award. She has more recently turned to fiction and is the author of literary crime novels that are all bestsellers in Latin America and have been translated into four languages. Thursday Night Widows won the Clarin Prize for fiction and is her first title available in English.


Child's Play
Carmen Posadas, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson
Harper

Luisa, a renowned mystery writer, is beginning her new novel, a story of psychological suspense that centers on the suspicious death of a child at an elite private day school. The author has a close familiarity with her setting: her thirteen-year-old daughter, Elba, is about to begin her academic year at the same school that Luisa once attended, a school much like the one in the novel.

But as her work progresses, the line between art and life begins to blur. Deeply repressed anxieties bubble to the surface, and she worries not only for her daughter's well-being but also for her own. As her new novel unfolds, events on the page ring with a disturbing familiarity—a troubling symmetry that is compounded when Luisa runs into two former classmates whose children also attend the school. The unexpected meeting brings to light a gruesome event the three shared.

When Elba is implicated in the accidental death of a classmate, past and present, real life and fiction, become one. Convinced that her novel has set in motion an unspeakable horror, Luisa must find a way to stop it—before everything she loves is lost.

The Holy Bullet
Luís Miguel Rocha, translated by Robin McAllister
Putnam

A fast-paced thriller about the conspiracy surrounding the 1981 attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, from the author of the international bestseller The Last Pope.

An international journalist, a war-weary Portuguese veteran, a Muslim with visions of the Virgin Mary, a rogue priest, and members of the world's most powerful--and secretive--organizations come together after the suspicious death of Pope John Paul I. A few operatives bold enough to penetrate the Vatican's shadowy inner circle will investigate what went wrong--and try to prevent the popular new pope from meeting the same fate.

In London, journalist Sarah Monteiro is again drawn into the web of international conspiracy, and must reunite--reluctantly--with the mysterious priest/assassin Rafael, and the sinister mastermind known only as JC.

Sarah's and Rafael's commitment to truth and justice could prove to be extremely dangerous, for them and for John Paul II, especially if they discover the true power behind the papal throne.

Luís Miguel Rocha was born in Oporto, Portugal, and worked for many years in London as a television writer and producer. He now lives in Portugal, where he continues to write for television and film.


Jerusalem
Gonçalo M. Tavares, translated by Anna Kushner
Dalkey Archive

One morning late in May, between three and six a.m., a group of lonely men and women wait to be brought together, like the elements in an equation. Ernst Spengler is about to throw himself out his window. Mylia, terminally ill and in enormous pain, goes out to visit a church. Hinnerk Obst, who’s always been told by the neighborhood children that he looks like a murderer, walks the streets with a loaded gun. As these characters are manipulated and brought together, a world of violence, fear, pain, and uncertainty is portrayed, where human nature itself, and the mechanisms determining our actions, our fictions, and the elements of our imagination, are laid bare.  Jerusalem is a terrifying and grimly humorous summation of the possibilities and limits of the human condition at the beginning of the 21st century.

Gonçalo M. Tavares was born in 1970. He has published numerous books since 2001 and has been awarded an impressive number of literary prizes in a very short time, including the Saramago Prize in 2005. He was also awarded the Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa 2007 for Jerusalem.


The Last Reader
David Toscana, translated by Asa Zatz
Texas Tech University

In tiny Icamole, an almost deserted village in Mexico's desert north, the librarian, Lucio, is also the village's only reader. Though it has not rained for a year in Icamole, when Lucio's son Remigio draws the body of a thirteen-year-old girl from his well, floodgates open on dark possibility. Strangely enamored of the dead girl's beauty and fearing implication, Remigio turns desperately to his father. Persuading his son to bury the body, Lucio baptizes the girl Babette, after the heroine of a favorite novel. Is Lucio the keeper of too many stories? As police begin to investigate, has he lost his footing? Or do revelation and resolution lie with other characters and plots from his library? Toscana displays brilliant mastery of the novel--in all its elements--as Lucio keeps every last reader guessing.

Mexican novelist David Toscana describes his narrative aesthetics as "realismo desquiciado" (unrestrained realism), breaking with the Latin trend of magic realism through a prose that keeps an eye on the concrete experience of life in all its absurdity and lavish strangeness. In its original Spanish El ultimo lector was awarded the National Colima Prize, the Premio José Fuentes Mares, and the Antonin Artaud Prize and was also shortlisted for Latin America's most important literary award, the Romulo Gallegos International Novel Prize.


The Informers.
Juan Gabriel Vásquez, translated by Anne McLean
Riverhead

When Gabriel Santoro's biography is scathingly reviewed by his own father, a public intellectual and famous Bogotá rhetorician, Gabriel could not imagine what had pierced his icy exterior to provoke such a painful reaction. A volume that catalogs the life of Sara Guterman, a longtime family friend and Jewish immigrant, since her arrival in Colombia in the 1930s, A Life in Exile seemed a slim, innocent exercise in recording modern history. But as a devastated Gabriel delves, yet again, into Sara's story, searching for clues to his father's anger, he cannot yet see the sinister secret buried in his research that could destroy his father's exalted reputation and redefine his own.

After his father's mysterious death in a car accident a few years later, Gabriel sets out anew to navigate half a century of half-truths and hidden meanings. With the help of Sara Guterman and his father's young girlfriend, Angelina, layer after shocking layer of Gabriel's world falls away and a complex portrait of his father emerges from the ruins. From the streets of 1940s Bogotá to a stranger's doorstep in 1990s Medellín, he unravels the web of doubt, betrayal, and guilt at the core of his father's life and he wades into a dark, long silenced period of Colombian history after World War II.

With a taut, riveting narrative and achingly beautiful prose, Juan Gabriel Vásquez delivers an expansive, powerful exploration of the sins of our fathers, of war's devastating psychological costs, and of the inescapability of the past. A novel that has earned Vásquez comparisons to Sebald, Borges, Roth, and Márquez, The Informers heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.

Reviewed for La Bloga by Michael Sedano here.


Season of Ash
Jorge Volpi, translated by Alfred MacAdam
Open Letter

The Soviet biologist Irina Granina has experienced the worst of Communism, struggling to free her husband from the gulag for years. Following the rise of Gorbachev, her husband finally emerges a changed man, but then Irina is forced to witness the worst of capitalism, as her daughter Oksana disappears into the newly rapacious consumer society and she loses her husband again, this time to greed and a lust for power.

In the West, Jennifer Moore, the scion of blue-blooded American wealth, takes a high-ranking job at the International Monetary Fund, where she hopes to bring the tough love of the free market economy to the unenlightened masses the world over. But she also has to deal with a philandering husband, Jack Wells, whose pharmaceutical company is a market wonder built on a house of cards, and her sister Allison, a free-spirited anti-globalization activist.

Jorge Volpi's Season of Ash puts a human face on earth-shaking events of the late twentieth century: the Chernobyl disaster, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Soviet communism and the rise of the Russian oligarchs, the cascading collapsing of developing economies, and the near-miraculous scientific advances of the Human Genome Project. A scientific investigation, a journalistic exposé, a detective novel, and a dark love story, Season of Ash is a thrilling exploration of greed and disillusionment, and a clear-eyed examination of the passions that rule our lives and make history.

___________________________________

So many books, so little time.

Later.