Bøger udgivet af Open Letter

First English-language story collection from one of Korea's most exciting young writers.

From the author nominated for the Best Translated Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize "e;Bae Suah offers the chance to unknow-to see the everyday afresh and be defamiliarized with what we believe we know-which is no small offering."e;-Sophie Hughes, Music & LiteratureNear the beginning of A Greater Music, the narrator, a young Korean writer, falls into an icy river in the Berlin suburbs, where she's been housesitting for her on-off boyfriend Joachim. This sets into motion a series of memories that move between the hazily defined present and the period three years ago when she first lived in Berlin. Throughout, the narrator's relationship with Joachim, a rough-and-ready metalworker, is contrasted with her friendship with a woman called M, an ultra-refined music-loving German teacher who was once her lover.A novel of memories and wandering, A Greater Music blends riffs on music, language, and literature with a gut-punch of an emotional ending, establishing Bae Suah as one of the most exciting novelists working today.Bae Suah, one of the most highly acclaimed contemporary Korean authors, has published more than a dozen works and won several prestigious awards. She has also translated several books from the German, including works by W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, and Jenny Erpenbeck. Her first book to appear in English, Nowhere to be Found, was longlisted for a PEN Translation Prize.Deborah Smith's literary translations from the Korean include two novels by Han Kang (The Vegetarian and Human Acts), and two by Bae Suah, (A Greater Music and Recitation).

Winner of the Eduard Vilde Literary AwardThe Brother opens with a mysterious stranger arriving in a small town controlled by a group of menmen who recently cheated the stranger's supposed sister out of her inheritance and mother's estate. Resigned to giving up on her dreams and ambitions, Laila took this swindling in stride, something that Brother won't stand for. Soon after his arrival, fortunes change dramatically, enraging this group of powerful men, motivating them to get their revenge on Brother. Meanwhile, a rat-faced paralegal makes it his mission to discover Brother's true identity . . .The first novel of Rein Raud's to appear in English, The Brother is, in Raud's own words, a spaghetti western told in poetic prose, simultaneously paying tribute to both Clint Eastwood and Alessandro Baricco. With its well-drawn characters and quick moving plot, it takes on more mythic aspects, lightly touching on philosophical ideas of identity and the ruthless way the world is divided into winners and losers.Rein Raud is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and several collections of short fiction. He's also a scholar in Japanese studies and has translated several works of Japanese into Estonian. One of his short pieces appeared in Best European Fiction 2015.Adam Cullen was born and educated in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but currently resides in Tallinn where he's translated dozens of plays, stories, and poems. He's also translated three published novels, including Radio by Tnu nnepalu and The Cavemen Chronicle by Mihkel Mutt.

"e;Irreducible to any single literary genre, the Volodinian cosmos is skillfully crafted, fusing elements of science fiction with magical realism and political commentary."e;-Nicholas Hauck, Music & LiteratureOne of Volodine's funniest books, Bardo or Not Bardo takes place in his universe of failed revolutions, radical shamanism, and off-kilter nomenclature.In each of these seven vignettes, someone dies and has to make his way through the Tibetan afterlife, also known as the Bardo. In the Bardo, souls wander for forty-nine days before being reborn, helped along on their journey by the teachings of the Book of the Dead.Unfortunately, Volodine's characters bungle their chances at enlightenment, with the recently dead choosing to waste away their afterlife sleeping, or choosing to be reborn as an insignificant spider. The still-living aren't much better off, making a mess of things in their own ways, such as erroneously reciting a Tibetan cookbook to a lost comrade instead of the holy book.Once again, Volodine has demonstrated his range and ambition, crafting a moving, hysterical work about transformations and the power of the book.Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French writer who has published twenty books under this name, several of which are available in English translation, such as Minor Angels, and Writers. He also publishes under the names Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.J. T. Mahany is a graduate of the Master of Arts in Literary Translation Studies program at the University of Rochester and is currently studying for his MFA at the University of Arkansas.

Two stories—one a grandiose adventure-mystery, the other a tale of erotic exploits—humorously intertwine in a French e-reader factory.

A work of contemporary reportage in which the author traverses Europe while recounting stories from his family's past.

Iceland's first modernist novel is a wild excursion through the mind of a senile man trying to write his memoirs.

"e;Duras's language and writing shine like crystals."e;-The New Yorker"e;A spectacular success. . . . Duras is at the height of her powers."e;-Edmund WhiteAvailable for the first time in English, Abahn Sabana David is a late-career masterpiece from one of France's greatest writers.Late one evening, David and Sabana-members of a communist group-arrive at a country house where they meet Abahn, the man they've been sent to guard and eventually kill for his perceived transgressions. A fourth man arrives (also named Abahn), and throughout the night these four characters discuss existential ideas of understanding, capitalism, violence, revolution, and dogs, while a gun lurks in the background the entire time.Suspenseful and thought-provoking, Duras's novel calls to mind the plays of Samuel Beckett in the way it explores human existence and suffering in the confusing contemporary world.Marguerite Duras wrote dozens of plays, film scripts, and novels, including The Ravishing of Lol Stein, The Sea Wall, and Hiroshima, Mon Amour. She's most well-known for The Lover, which received the Goncourt Prize in 1984 and was made into a film in 1992. This is her third book to be published by Open Letter.Kazim Ali is a poet, essayist, and novelist, and has published a translation of Water's Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri in addition to co-translating Duras's L'Amour. He teaches at Oberlin College and the University of Southern Maine.

A panoramic view of a seaside resort plagued by corruption, a child abuse scandal, and a Nazi past.

The English-language debut from one of Denmark's most exciting, celebrated young writers, One of Us Is Sleeping is a haunting novel about loss in all its forms. As she returns home to visit her mother who is dying of cancer, the narrator recounts a brief, intense love affair, as well as the grief and disillusionment that follow its end. The book's striking imagery and magnificent prose underpin its principal theme: the jarring contrast between the recollection of stability - your parents, your childhood home, your love - and the continual endings that we experience throughout our lives. A true-to-life, deeply poetic novel that works in the same vein as Anne Carson, One of Us Is Sleeping has won Klougart countless accolades and award nominations-including the Readers' Book Award-securing her place as a major new voice in world literature.

"e;Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language."e;Ricardo Piglia"e;What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters' attempts to write their own narratives within its excess."e;BookforumIn modern-day Paris, Pichn Garay receives a computer disk containing a manuscriptwhich might be fictional, or could be a memoirby Doctor Real, a nineteenth-century physician tasked with leading a group of five mental patients on a trip to a recently constructed asylum. Their trip, which ends in disaster and fire, is a brilliant tragicomedy thanks to the various insanities of the patients, among whom is a delusional man who greatly over-estimates his own importance and a nymphomaniac nun who tricks everyoneeven the other patientsinto sleeping with her.Fascinating as a faux historical novel and written in Saer's typically gorgeous, Proustian style, The Clouds can be read as a metaphor for exilea huge theme for Saer and a lot of Argentine writersas well as an examination of madness.Juan Jos Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Five of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.Hilary Vaughn Dobel has an MFA in poetry and translation from Columbia University. She is the author of two manuscripts and, in addition to Saer, she has translated work by Carlos Pintado.

"e;Hats off to one of the most inventive writers of French literature. . . . Hubert Haddad concocts a colorful novel, funny and inventive, as clever as the Fox sisters themselves."e;Jean-Franois Delapre, Saint Christophe BookstoreThe Fox Sisters grew up outside of Rochester, NY, in a house with a reputation for being haunted, due to a series of strange "e;knockings"e; that plagued its inhabitants. Fed up with the sounds, the youngest of the sisters (aged twelve) challenged their ghost and ended up communicating with a spirit who had been murdered in the house and buried in the cellar.The Fox Sisters became instantly famous for talking to the dead, launching the Spiritualist Movement. After taking Rochester by storm, they moved to New York where they were the most famous mediums of the time, performing seances for hundreds of peopleuntil it all fell apart. Yet, even today, the Fox Sisters are still considered to be the founders of one of the most popular religious movements in recent centuries.Rich in historical detail, Rochester Knockings novelizes the rise and fall of these most infamous of mediums, and sheds a unique light on the impressionability and fragility of nineteenth-century AmericaHubert Haddad was born in Tunisia, and is the author of dozens of works, including the novels Palestine (winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie), Tango Chinois, and La Condition Magique (winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Socit des Gens de Lettres).Jennifer Grotz is the editor of Open Letter's poetry series, but is also a poet in her own right (The Needle, Cusp) and translates from French. Additionally, she is a professor of English, creative writing, and translation at the University of Rochester.

"e;Mariani has emerged as one of the few significant post-Montalian poets in Italy, and Molino is a graceful, experienced, thoroughly reliable translator. The result is an elegant book, an important book, bringing a distinctive voice into English."e;Rosanna WarrenCulled from his entire career, the poems in Traces of Time cover numerous themes, most prominently the poet's relationship to history and how poetry can exist outside of it. "e;Tiananmen, 20 Years Later,"e; "e;Protocols of War,"e; and "e;Checkmate"e; (about 9/11) all illustrate Lucio Mariani's concerns "e;through images both dense and porous, lines both cadenced and spasmodic,"e; and confirm his place in contemporary poetry."e;Protocols of War"e;(Baghdad is not far)Of this time you'll gather no memoriesfor your eternal hunger.Can't you see the slags in the weavethat enfolds the flesh of the living?Can't you see that the boxes and drawerswhere the silver of bygone days aboundshave no room for trinkets or seashellsof a present founded on plaster markets,lost facing a mirrorseeking itself in the halls of the world?Don't you see that for the first timeevery man erects ruins for his heirsenacting inane protocols of warwhile the future slams its shutters tightso as to celebrate on statistical altarsthe glory of mindless marionettesmaneuvered by nothingness,sprung in the bitter fields of oblivion?Of this time you'll gather no memories.Lucio Mariani is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including Echoes of Memory (available in English from UPNE), as well as a volume of essays, a collection of short stories, and translations of works by Csar Vallejo, Tristan Corbire, and Yves Bonnefoy.Anthony Molino is a translator from the Italian, an anthropologist, and a psychoanalyst. In addition to Lucio Mariani's two volumes, he has also translated works by Valerio Magrelli and Antonio Porta, among others.

Winner of the Vick Foundation Novel of the Year Award in 2007, Party Headquarters takes place in the eighties and nineties, during Bulgaria's transition from communist rule to democracy.The bookwhich is a love story, a parody, and a thriller about a political hoaxopens with the main character visiting his father-in-law, an old communist party boss who is dying, and being tasked with delivering a suitcase filled with one-and-a-half million euros.It's one of Bulgaria's most popular myths: As the communist party fell apart, high ranking officials squirreled away bags and suitcases containing a significant portion of the country's wealth, and that these bags are still circulating through Europe, waiting to be delivered to various conspirators.But this is just the beginning of the corruption and inequality that plagued Bulgaria during this time. While immersing himself in pornography and prostitution, the hero of Party Headquarters reflects back on his life and the emblematic events that took place around that timethe anticommunist protests, the arson attack on the Communist Party Headquarters in Sofia, and, most tragically and crucially, the Chernobyl disaster, during which the families of party officials were sheltered away and fed special, safe food, while the regular citizens suffered.Beautiful and tragic, Party Headquarters is an engrossing testament to the struggles that haunted Bulgaria after the fall of the Soviet Union, many of which continue to resonate today.Before penning the Vick Prize-winning novel Party Headquarters, Georgi Tenev had already published four books, founded the Triumviratus Art Group, hosted The Library television program about books, and written plays that have been performed in Germany, France, and Russia. He is also a screenwriter for film and TV.Angela Rodel earned an MA in linguistics from UCLA and received a Fulbright Fellowship to study and learn Bulgarian.

"e;[Labbe] wreaks havoc on narrative rules from the start and keeps doing it."e;BookforumLoquela, Carlos Labbe's fourth novel and second to be translated into English, is a narrative chameleon, a shape-shifting exploration of fiction's possibilities.At a basic level, this book is like a hybrid of Julio Cortzar and Paul Auster: a distorted detective novel, a love story, and a radical statement about narrative art. Behind the silence that unites and separates Carlos and Elisa, behind the game that estranges the albino girls, Alicia and Violeta, from the best summer afternoons, behind the destiny of Neutriaa city that disappears with childhood and returns with desireand behind a literary move-ment that might be the ultimate vanguard while at the same time the greatest falsification, questions arise concerning who truly writes for whom in a novelthe author or the reader.Through an array of voices, overlapping story-lines, a kaleidoscope of literary references, and a delirious prose, Labbe carves out a space for himself among such form-defying Latin American greats as Diamela Eltit, Juan Carlos Onetti, and Jorge Luis Borges.Carlos Labbe, one of Granta's "e;Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists,"e; 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.

Featured on Jeff VanderMeer's "e;Epic List of Favorite Books Read in 2015"e;"e;Rodoreda had bedazzled me by the sensuality with which she reveals things within the atmosphere of her novels."e;Gabriel Garca Marquez"e;Rodoreda plumbs a sadness that reaches beyond historic circumstances . . . an almost voluptuous vulnerability."e;Natasha Wimmer, The Nation"e;It is a total mystery to me why [Rodoreda] isn't widely worshipped; along with Willa Cather, she's on my list of authors whose works I intend to have read all of before I die. Tremendous, tremendous writer."e;John Darnielle, The Mountain GoatsDespite its title, there is little of war and much of the fantastic in this coming-of-age story, which was the last novel Merc Rodoreda published during her lifetime.We first meet its young protagonist, Adri Guinart, as he is leaving Barcelona out of boredom and a thirst for freedom, embarking on a long journey through the backwaters of a rural land that one can only suppose is Catalonia, accompanied by the interminable, distant rumblings of an indefinable war. In vignette-like chapters and with a narrative style imbued with the fantastic, Guinart meets with numerous adventures and peculiar characters who offer him a composite, if surrealistic, view of an impoverished, war-ravaged society and shape his perception of his place in the world.As in Rodoreda's Death in Spring, nature and death play an fundamental role in a narrative that often takes on a phantasmagoric quality and seems to be a meditation on the consequences of moral degradation and the inescapable presence of evil.Merc Rodoreda (19081983) is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled in France and Switzerland following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda began writing the novels and short storiesTwenty-Two Short Stories, The Time of the Doves, Camellia Street, Garden by the Seathat would eventually make her internationally famous.Maruxa Relao is a journalist and translator based in Barcelona. She has worked as a translator for The Wall Street Journal, a writer for NY1, and wrote articles for the New York Daily News, Newsday, and New York magazine, among other publications.Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

"e;Dark, scary, and unbelievably funny."e;Los Angeles Times"e;The best short novel I've read this year. . . .Small, dark, and hard to put down, The Pets may be a classic in the literature of small enclosed spaces."e;Barnes & Noble ReviewBack in Reykjavik after a vacation in London, Emil Halldorsson is waiting for a call from a beautiful girl, Greta, that he met on the plane ride home, and he's just put on a pot of coffee when an unexpected visitor knocks on the door. Peeking through a window, Emil spies an erstwhile friendHavard Knutsson, his one-time roommate and current resident of a Swedish mental institutionon his doorstep, and he panics, taking refuge under his bed and hoping the frightful nuisance will simply go away.Havard won't be so easily put off, however, and he breaks into Emil's apartment and decides to wait for his returnEmil couldn't have gone far; the pot of coffee is still warming on the stove. While Emil hides under his bed, increasingly unable to show himself with each passing moment, Havard discovers the booze, and he ends up hosting a bizarre party for Emil's friends, and Greta.An alternately dark and hilarious story of cowardice, comeuppance, and assumed identity, the breezy and straightforward style of The Pets belies its narrative depth, and disguises a complexity that grows with every page.Bragi Ólafsson is the author of several books of poetry and short stories, and four novels, including Time Off, which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Prize in 1999 (as was The Pets), and Party Games, for which Bragi received the DV Cultural Prize in 2004. The Ambassador, available from Open Letter, was a finalist for the 2008 Nordic Literature Prize and received the Icelandic Bookseller's Award as best novel of the year. Bragi is one of the founders of the publishing company Smekkleysa (Bad Taste), and has translated Paul Auster's City of Glass into Icelandic. He is also a former bass player with The Sugarcubes, the internationally successful pop group that featured Bjurk as the lead vocalist.Janice Balfour studied literature and Italian at the University of Iceland. In addition to Bragi Ólafsson, she has translated two collections of short stories by Gydir Elíasson.

Considered by many to be the grand achievement of her later period, Death in Spring is one of Merc Rodoreda's most complex and beautifully constructed works. The novel tells the story of the bizarre and destructive customs of a nameless townburying the dead in trees after filling their mouths with cement to prevent their soul from escaping, or sending a man to swim in the river that courses underneath the town to discover if they will be washed away by a floodthrough the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy who must come to terms with the rhyme and reason of this ritual violence, and with his wild, child-like, and teenage stepmother, who becomes his playmate. It is through these rituals, and the developing relationships between the boy and the townspeople, that Rodoreda portrays a fully-articulated, though quite disturbing, society.The horrific rituals, however, stand in stark contrast to the novel's stunningly poetic language and lush descriptions. Written over a period of twenty yearsafter Rodoreda was forced into exile following the Spanish Civil WarDeath in Spring is musical and rhythmic, and truly the work of a writer at the height of her powers.Merc Rodoreda is widely regarded as the most important Catalan writer of the twentieth century. Exiled to France during the Spanish Civil War, and only able to return to Catalonia in the mid-1960s, she wrote a number of highly praised works, including The Time of the Doves and Death in Spring.Martha Tennent was born in the U.S, but has lived most of her life in Barcelona where she served as founding dean of the School of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Vic. She translates from Spanish and Catalan, and received an NEA Translation Fellowship for her work on Rodoreda.

A key book in Volodine's literary universe in which "post-exoticist" writers are imprisoned for subversion in a post-apocalyptic world.

"e;The most important Argentinian writer since Borges."e;The IndependentThe One Before is a triptych of sorts, consisting of a series of short piecescalled "e;Arguments"e;and two longer stories"e;Half-Erased"e; and "e;The One Before"e;all of which revolve around the ideas of exile and memory.Many of the characters who populate Juan Jos Saer's other novels appear here, including Tomatis, ngel Leto, and Washington Noriega (who appear in La Grande, Scars, and The Sixty-Five Years of Washington, all of which are available from Open Letter). Saer's typical themes are on display in this collection as well, as is his idiosyncratic blend of philosophical ruminations and precise storytelling.From the story of the two characters who decide to bury a message in a bottle that simply says "e;MESSAGE,"e; to Pigeon Garay's attempt to avoid the rising tides and escape Argentina for Europe, The One Before evocatively introduces readers to Saer's world and gives the already indoctrinated new material about their favorite characters.Juan Jos Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spain's prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event.Roanne Kantor is a doctoral student in comparative literature at the University of Texas at Austin. Her translation of The One Before won the 2009 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation. Her translations from Spanish have appeared in Little Star magazine, Two Lines, and Palabras Errantes.

First novel from the winner of the Nordic Council's Literature Prize is about families, death, secrets, and failure.

A genre-bending novel about two missing children, a fear-inducing drug called "hadón," and seven scientists collaborating on a novel-game.