Loquela

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

At a basic level, this is a distorted detective novel mixed with a love story and a radical statement about narrative art. Beyond the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, beyond the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from pleasant summer evenings, beyond the destiny of Neutria - a city that disappears with childhood - and beyond a Chilean literary movement that could be the last vanguard, while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novel: the author or the reader.

Reviews

". . . [W]hat we encounter in Loquela is a skillful unmakingcomplete with diary excerpts, missives from beyond the grave and an invented barn-burning manifesto on a literary movement, 'Corporalism,' which seeks to breathe life into the "corpse" of literaturethat manages to offer new ways of thinking about what the novel can do."Laird Hunt, L.A. Times "[Loquela] is drenched in the spirit of experimentality, dry and absurd humor, strangeness and intrigue."Simone Wolff, Bookslut "Begins to fuck with your head from its very first word."Toby Litt "Navidad & Matanza could be the hallucinogenic amalgamation of a Csar Aira plot with setting and characters conceived by Bolao if written using Oulipo-style constraints. . . . With ample imagination and commanding style, Navidad & Matanza certainly marks Labb as a young author from whom we ought to anticipate great, fascinating things to come."Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books

Author Bio

Carlos Labb, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, one of which, Navidad & Matanza, is available in English from Open Letter. In addition to his writings he is a musician, and has released three albums. Will Vanderhyden received an MA in Literary Translation from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labb, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Mars, Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio, and Elvio Gandolfo.