GRANTA: THE BEST OF YOUNG SPANISH LANGUAGE NOVELISTS By Freeman, John (Author) Paperback on 06-Dec-2010

The Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists #1

by John Freeman (Editor), Rodrigo Hasbún (Contributor)

Granta 113, published simultaneously in Spain as Los Mejores Narradores Jovenes en Espanol, showcases the work of 22 promising new writers. It is eagerly anticipated, as Granta's previous Best Young Novelist issues have been startlingly accurate, calling out the work of writers from Salman Rushdie to Jonathan Franzen and Zadie Smith.

Here, for the first time in translation, we predict the literary stars of the future.

CONTENTS


7 Foreword
Aurelio Major
Valerie Miles

11 Cohiba
Lucia Puenzo
(translated by Valerie Miles)

29 Stars and Stripes
Santiago Roncagliolo
(translated by Edith Grossman)

41 After Effects
Oliverio Coelho
(translated by Anne McLean)

51 The Coming Flood
Andres Barba
(translated by Lisa Dillman)

65 The Place of Losses
Rodrigo Hasbun
(translated by Carolina De Robertis)

81 Conditions for the Revolution
Pola Oloixarac
(translated by Mara Faye Lethem)

99 The Hotel Life
Javier Montes
(translated by Margaret Jull Costa)

115 Gigantomachy
Pablo Guitierrez
(translated by Anna Kushner)

123 After Helena
Andres Neuman
(translated by Richard Gwyn)



135 Eva and Diego
Alberto Olmos
(translated by Peter Bush)

147 The Survivor
Sonia Hernandez
(translated by Samantha Schnee)

157 Scenes from a Comfortable Life
Andres Ressia Colino
(translated by Katherine Silver)

169 Seltz
Carlos Yushimito
(translated by Alfred Mac Adam)

187 The Girls Resembled Each Other in the Unfathomable
Carlos Labbe
(translated by Natasha Wimmer)

195 In Utah There Are Mountains Too
Federico Falco
(translated by Alfred Mac Adam)

217 Small Mouth, Thin Lips
Antonio Ortuno
(translated by Tanya Huntington Hyde)

233 Gerardo’s Letters
Elvira Navarro
(translated by Natasha Wimmer)

243 The Bonfire and the Chessboard
Matias Nespolo
(translated by Frank Wynne)

263 The Cuervo Brothers
Andres Felipe Solano
(translated by Nick Caistor)

273 Olingiris
Samanta Schweblin
(translated by Daniel Alarcon)

287 Ways of Going Home
Alejandro Zambra
(translated by Megan McDowell)

301 A Few Words on the Life Cycle of Frogs
Patricio Pron
(translated by Janet Hendrickson)

321 Notes on translators

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Spanish Literature, Anthologies, Spain, Literature, Essays

315 pages, Unknown Binding

First published November 25, 2010

About the author

Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

John Freeman is an award-winning writer and book critic who has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Freeman won the 2007 James Patterson Pageturner Award for his work as the president of the National Book Critics Circle, and was the editor of Granta from 2009 to 2013. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at NYU and edits a new literary biannual called Freeman's.

Reviews

[jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

the latest granta, featuring an array of "the best young spanish language novelists," is, for the most part, a strong collection of burgeoning talent. each of the twenty-two writers was born in or after 1975, and have at least one novel or short story collection already published. nearly half of the included writings are excerpts from novels in progress, or yet-to-be translated works, while the majority are short stories proper (some published herein for the first time). culled from three hundred submissions, these short pieces usher in a new generation of spanish language writers. lacking anything even remotely resembling the magical realism that previously brought fame to so many latin american authors, these works instead offer more contemporary, cosmopolitan styles and themes. although a few of the stories seem hollow and underdeveloped, all of the writers ably demonstrate great literary promise.

of the collection's twenty-two tales, the works that stand out as the finest are:

* rodrigo hasbún (bolivia): "the place of losses"

* javier montes (spain): "the hotel life"

* andrés neuman (argentina): "after helena"

* andrés ressia colino (uruguay): "scenes from a comfortable life"

* federico falco (argentina): "in utah there are mountains too"

* antonio ortuño (mexico): "small mouth, thin lips"

* matías néspolo (argentina): "the bonfire and the chessboard"

* patricio pron (argentina): "a few words on the life cycle of frogs"

[Chad Post · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty solid collection. Some of my favorites: Santiago Roncagliolo, Andres Barba, Pola Oloixarac, Javier Montes, Andres Ressia Colina, Antonio Ortuno, Alejandro Zambra, and Patricio Pron. (Especially the Pron and Ortuno.) Definitely worth checking out . . .

BTW, we're running a "22 Days of Awesome" series on Three Percent, which featuring each of these authors one-by-one. You can check out all the entries here: http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

[Veronica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was very underwhelmed. I was hoping to find some new Spanish writers that appealed to me enough that I would battle through their work in Spanish. But none of these really tempted me to make that effort. A lot of the stories were tediously modern, alienated, and absurd. The only ones I liked were Javier Montes' The Hotel Life and Federico Falco's In Utah There Are Mountains Too. The others left me cold for the most part.

And some of the translation was surprisingly bad -- clumsy, ugly phrasing. I don't expect a professional translator to use "ignore" in English to mean "be unaware of", or to refer to "burning cigarettes" when they clearly meant "smoking cigarettes". You were always aware that the work was translated -- except for the Falco story, limpidly translated into natural, flowing English by Alfred Mac Adam.

[Christopher Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag if ever there was one. Some of the stories here were a struggle to get through - there seemed nothing to them - and others were not stories at all but excerpts from the writer's upcoming novel, which I think should have disqualified them from inclusion here. It's like paying for Amazon's "Look Inside..." feature. But a few were good, including "Small Mouth, Thin Lips" by Antonio Ortuno, "The Bonfire and the Chessboard" by Matias Nespolo, and the deeply mysterious "Olingiris" by Samanta Schweblin.

[Charley]

Lucia Puenzo: So extremely uncomfortable
Rodriga Hasbun: Interessant
Andres Neuman: Nice
Sonia Hernandez: Wanna read more
Antiono Ortuna: Wanna read more
Elvira Navarro: Liked it
Andres Felipe Solano: Meer! Zo ontzettend capturing geschreven!!!
Samanta Schweblin: Superraar maar ergens wel interessant
Alejandro Zambra: Liked it
Patricio Pron: Subtle & finely woven story. Would like to read more

[Adrian Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult too accept that the anthology on Pakistan (population 200m) would be better than the one on Spanish speakers (population 440m). Let's blame the translators.

[Emma Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The meta fictions in this collection only improve over time and become rather cryptic..! I love it.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twenty-two Spanish-language authors, all 35 years or younger, identified for their creative promise and gathered in a single volume published in 2010 (Granta, vol. 113). Eight are Argentinian; 6, Spanish; 2, Peruvian; 2 Chilean; and one each from Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico and Colombia. Nine of the stories were either excerpts from already published works or from works in progress. The rest were new short stories.

The stories, whether extracted or new, were as varied as their authors. Certainly as a group they confirm the strong and engaging novelistic talents of a new generation of men and women writing in Spanish. They are for the most part new voices not necessarily in chorus with well-established writers such as Bolaño, García Marquez, Vargas Llosa and Goytisolo. Given Granta’s track record with identifying new talent, I expect to hear more about several of the new writers sometime in the future.

I spent more time with these stories than I had initially intended. I ended up re-reading many of them two, even three times, particularly ones that seemed more experimental. Several of the stories grew on me in the re-reading. For example, Andrés Barba’s “The Coming Flood” (a woman turns to prostitution in order to have surgery grafting a horn to her forehead) left me confused the first time around. And with Lucía Puenzo’s “Cohiba” (a young woman recounts her experiences in Cuba during a week-long workshop presented by García Marquez and that ends in death) I needed a third reading to unpack its several layers of themes.

But other stories drew me in the first time around. Santiago Roncagliolo’s “Stars and Stripes” (two young acquaintances travel different roads to similar ends), Andres Neuman’s “After Helena” (tensions and animosities in an academic community) and Federico Falco’s “In Utah There Are Mountains Too” (a young girl stalks a Mormon missionary) were three of the more engaging. They were cleverly plotted with well-defined and engaging characters. And among the extracted authors, I enjoyed Matias Nespolo’s “The Bonfire and the Chessboard” and Andres Felipe Solano’s “The Cuervo Brothers’. I would certainly be interested in reading more of the works from which the paragraphs came. Pola Oloixarac’s “Conditions for the Revolution” (a mother and a daughter’s conflicting responses to social conflict) was my least favorite piece, perhaps a bit too experimental for my tastes.

The translations all seemed extraordinarily accomplished. What I missed was reading the stories in the original Spanish. Even skilled translations miss important aspects of the stylistic uniqueness.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

An ambitious project, spanning much of Spanish-speaking South America and Spain itself, but ultimately the majority of the stories are mediocre and forgettable. Themes of childhood and adolescence dominate, and there is a strange sense of similarity across most of the stories. Many feel fragmentary and unsatisfyingly inconclusive - perhaps because the editors chose to include extracts from novels as well as short stories. Of all of them, I think I would only save the first and last, by Lucia Puenzo and Patricio Pron respectively: both are meta-studies, reflecting on the nature of writing and learning to be a writer, but are also weaved through with strong narratives in their own right. Overall, not Granta at its best.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another good issue of Granta. Although I cannot say that I liked every story in this collection, I appreciated Granta's initiative to introduce the English-speaking world to some of the potential stars of Spanish-language lit. I hate not having better foreign language ability, but in this small way Granta makes up for my inadequacies. And, this issue confirms that Spanish-language lit has come a long way from the magical realism of Garcia Marquez (not that there's anything wrong with magical realism).

[Catherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found most of these hard to get on with: many of the stories were too stylised, or political, or sex-ful for my taste (and I can put up with a lot, usually). I was sad that I wasn't drawn to picking it up more frequently since it is, after all, one of those full of fiction editions for which I yearn. The stories I thought were best were bitter-sweet: Eva and Diego, by Alberto Olmas (charting the beginning and end of a marriage)and Stars and Stripes by Santiago Roncagliolo (be careful what you wish for, someone else may get your dream).

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

these stories are for the most part ALL DAMN GOOD. some are new short stories, some are chapters for new novels. most all are in the modern style, not magical. one sort-of-theme running through most are the global war on terror and what that really means. santiago roncagliolo is excellent, patricio pron too, andres neuman, carlos yushimito, elvira navarro, hell, they are all good pretty much.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A handful of these stories rocked my psyche, and some almost compelled me to contact the editors and ask who paid how much to be published. Overall, an interesting collection; if I were more inspired, I would list my favorite stories on here, but instead they're written down on a post-it note stuck to the inside cover.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too few women, too many Argentines, but honestly, I can't complain too much. (And I've only read two of the stories so far. One was fantastic, one was fantastically mediocre.) Thanks to Granta for making this effort, though how sad not to see Mexico represented.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of new young Spanish language authors. The works by Pola Olioxarac, Alberto Olmos, and Matais Nespolo were especially good. "A Few Words On The Life Cycle of Frogs by Patricio Pron, the final work in the collection is a required read for anyone attempting to write.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know if it's just that the short story isn't really my thing, but very few of these stories grabbed me at all. I can't say I finished this thinking "I wonder what his/her full length novel will be like?" Which is surely the point?

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

AS one might expect from a selection of stories by different writers, there is an uneven literary output. What I enjoyed was the unexpected pleasure of finding the noir going strong in Spanish writers, and the fantastical as well.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection. The only problem is there was no rep from central America or the Caribbean. The quality of the writing was good overall

[Queenie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the one about the porn star with the unicorn horn on her forehead.

[Anda · Rating 2 out of 5]

i thought i would love this. oh well. books like this one remind me why i need to start using the library again. no investment...

[Kerry]

A little uneven, some I really liked, others I took a positive dislike to.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just didn't like this issue of Granta at all. None of the stories grabbed me, I found the whole thing tedious.

[K Stark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some better than others, interesting read...

[Lozzle_pops · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really good mix of styles and stories, but only a couple have really stuck in my mind since I finished it.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patricio Pron. That's all I can say.

[Vilis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kā jau jebkurā stāstu izlasē, bija gabali, kuri patika mazāk, bet lielāko daļu izlasīju ar prieku. Tālāk medīt gan gribētu tikai pāris autorus.

[Haldane Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

good stories interested in Samanta Schweblin

[Stuart Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishingly consistent; page after page of original, gripping story-telling.