Clerk

(Paperback)

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Description

NEW STYLE FOR SACCOMANNO: The first two Saccomanno books Open Letter published were two noir titles for which he won the Dashiell Hammett award. The Clerk will appeal to those fans along with the growing number of readers with an interest in speculative fiction.

TIMELY: The dystopian setting hardly seems dystopian in 2020 and, like with 77, is a stark reminder of the need to retain your individuality and resist authoritarian regimes.

Reviews

"A strange book in the best sense of the word. This is not an ordinary novel, it will surprise many."--Rodrigo Fresn

"A discovery; an anti-utopian moral story with raw, carefully-crafted writing; among the best I've read in a long time."--Rosa Montero

"The precision of the writing is entwined with the author's visionary capacity."--Pere Gimferrer, member of the Premio Biblioteca Breve jury

"A book both powerful in what it tells and brilliant in what remains silent."--Menndez Salmn

"There's something about the book that is decidedly addictive, a real page-turner."--Yann Suty

"By inserting a cold, heartless but all-too-familiar corporate environment into an ultra-violent urban universe, The Clerk draws a chilling portrait of the savagery and difficulty to love that characterize contemporary society, and especially of alienation produced by bureaucracy."--Charybde 27

"With spectral serenity, suggestive images, and outstanding stylistic coherence, Saccomanno ... unravels the story of a contemporary slave in only 55 chapters."--Die Welt

"Saccomanno has a superb command of horror. The Clerk is an existential expressionist blend of office novel and film noir."--Berliner Zeitung

Author Bio

Guillermo Saccomanno is the author of numerous novels and story collections, including El buen dolor, winner of the Premio Nacional de Literatura, and 77 and Gesell Dome, both of which won the Dashiell Hammett Prize. (Both available from Open Letter.) He also received Seix Barral's Premio Biblioteca Breve de Novela for El oficinista and the Rodolfo Walsh Prize for nonfiction for Un maestro. Critics tend to compare his works to those of Balzac, Zola, Dos Passos, and Faulkner.

Andrea G. Labinger is the translator of more than a dozen works from the Spanish, including books by Ana Mara Shua, Liliana Heker, Luisa Valenzuela, and Alicia Steimberg, among others.