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One of the fall Open Letter titles that I’m most jacked about is Quim Monzó’s A Thousand Morons. I’ve been a huge fan of Monzó’s for a while now (maybe since I read, The Enormity of the Tragedy, I guess) and am so proud that we have him on our list. (If you want to check him out, I STRONGLY recommend checking out One Night which appeared in Guernica back in August.)
Anyway, to correspond with the release of this book, we’re going to be showing the movie version, A Thousand Fools, during ALTA. (To be specific, this will take place on Thursday, October 4th from 1:30 to 3:30 at The Little. And before the screening, translator Peter Bush will talk about Monzó, his work, and Catalan literature.)
There’s more to this event to share with you, but first, here’s a trailer:
OK, now thanks to the combined brilliance of George Carroll (our West Coast sales rep!), Paul Yamazaki (of City Lights), and Rick Simonson (of Elliott Bay), we’re going to be giving away t-shirts to promote this book. To be more accurate, we’ll be giving away one thousand t-shirts that look sort of like this (this is an low-res mock up):
And to drive home the promotional point of this, the back will be individually numbered, so each recipient will know exactly which “moron” he/she is:
So everyone coming to the showing during ALTA, all booksellers who are Open Letter fans, every single subscriber, bunches of friends, and any of you who email me can get your own free “Thousand Morons” t-shirt. The only criteria is that you take a picture of yourself wearing it and post it to our Facebook page. (You don’t have to do this, but it would be pretty awesome, and would make us feel loved.)
There you are: One more reason why you should come to ALTA.
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Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
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“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Reviewed by Emily Davis
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately, and I’m therefore liable to see everything through science-fiction-colored glasses. But when the pages of The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira refer to “the totality of the present and of eternity”. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
