Heaven

by Manuel Vilas, James Womack (Translation)

A collection of dark, funny Iberian poems about drinking, sex and death. Manuel Vilas speaks in the voice of bitter experience, experience which seems intent on sending him up. He is a novelist as well as a poet, and his poems tell stories as the speaker moves quixotically across the map and between romances. His instinct for rhythm gives the reader a firm sense of place and tone. Universal in their concerns, taking in love and the end of love, life and the end of life, the poems are also resolutely Spanish in how they speak - bluntly, humorously - always alert for the fantastic. This is the first translation of Vilas's two major collections Heaven (El cielo, 2000) and Heat (Calor, 2008) into English. Thematically fuelled with alcohol, death and sex, they go off into free-wheeling megalomaniacal flights of fantasy. The translator, James Womack, has won prizes for his versions of Vilas and of the Russian poet Mayakovsky.

Genres: Poetry, Spanish Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

About the author

Narrador y poeta nacido en Barbastro (Huesca) en el año 1962. También ha publicado numerosos artículos en diarios como el Heraldo de Aragón, ABC, El País, El Mundo, Público y El día de Aragón, amén de suplementos literarios como ABC Cultural y Babelia.

En sus inicios publicó poesía en títulos como El rumor de las llamas o El mal gobierno, sin embargo, si bien ha continuado publicando libros de poesía, su salto a un público más amplio se produjo tras la publicación de las novelas España y Aire Nuestro, lanzada por Alfaguara. Mediante la conocida editorial de narrativa también público Los inmortales, El luminoso regalo y el volumen de relatos Setecientos millones de rinoceronte. En 2016, a través del sello Malpaso, lanzó Lou Reed era español.