Spiritual Choreographies

(Paperback)

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Description

By blinking his eyes and moving his pupils, a paraplegic manthe onetime vocalist in a famous rock bandcomposes a kind of anti-biography that is corrected and expanded upon by an unknown editor. Alternating between the vocalists impressionistic recollections and the editors corrections, an asynchronous story emerges, evoking the vocalists childhood in southern Chile and telling of the rise and fall of the band that he grew up to lead, while hinting at a multiplicity of other narrative possibilities.

Reviews

" . . [W]hat we encounter in Loquela is a skillful unmaking--complete 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 literature--that 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

"Labb deliberately distorts conventional narrative forms to create a challenging but engaging text."--New York Journal of Books

"Not for the casual reader, the book reveals its meaning in tiny shock waves that dissipate almost as quickly as they appear, an effect that will appeal to the right reader."--Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Carlos Labb, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of seven novels, including Navidad & Matanza and Loquela, and three collections of short stories. In addition to his writings he is a musician, and has released three albums. He is a co-editor at Sangria, a publishing house based in Santiago and Brooklyn, where he translates and runs workshops. He also writes literary essays, the most notable ones on Juan Carlos Onetti, Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolao. Three of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.

Will Vanderhyden received an MA in Literary Translation Studies from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labb, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Mars, Rafael Snchez Ferlosio, Rodrigo Fresn, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate Rodrigo Fresn's novel, The Invented Part, which won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.