We are teaming up with two of our favorite indie bookstores to present the latest translation of Sergio Pitol’s work by George Henson!
Third Place Books and Brazos Bookstore (Houston, TX) welcome translator George Henson and Mexican writer Daniel Saldaña Paris discussing Henson's translation of The Love Parade by Sergio Pitol, "one of Mexico’s most culturally complex and composite writers." (Publishers Weekly)
This event will be broadcast live on Zoom. Registering will provide you with a unique access link in an email. During the event, you can ask questions using the Q&A feature, or chat with fellow attendees. A recording of the event will be made available and emailed to all who register.
This author talk is free! You can sustain these bookstores’ marvelous author series by purchasing a copy of the featured book from Third Place Books or Brazos Bookstore.
About The Love Parade. . .
Following the chance discovery of certain documents, a historian sets out to unravel the mystery of a murder committed in his childhood Mexico City home in the autumn of 1942. Mexico had just declared war on Germany, and its capital had recently become a colorful cauldron of the most unusual and colorful of the European ilk: German communists, Spanish republicans, Trotsky and his disciples, Balkan royalty, agents of the most varied secret services, opulent Jewish financiers, and more.
As the historian-turned-detective begins his investigation, he introduces us to a rich and eccentric gallery of characters, the media of politics, the newly installed intelligentsia, and beyond. Identities are crossed, characters are confounded; Pitol constructs a novel that turns on mistaken identities, blurred memories, and conflicting interests, and whose protagonist is haunted by the ever-looming possibility of never uncovering the truth. At the same time a fast-paced detective investigation and an uproarious comedy of errors, this novel cemented Pitol’s place as one of Latin America’s most important twentieth-century authors. Winner of the Herralde Prize in 1984, The Love Parade is the first installment of what Pitol would later dub his Carnival Triptych.
Praise for The Love Parade. . .
"One of Mexico’s most culturally complex and composite writers."
—Publishers Weekly
"Certainly the strangest, most unfathomable and eccentric. . . . His voice reverberates beyond the margins of his books."
—Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd
"'A history writer seeks to uncover a murder' may sound like the Sergio Pitol you know, but rest assured: this is not. Enrique Vila-Matas once wrote of Pitol (in addition to calling him the best Spanish-language writer of our time) that "his style is to say everything but not to solve the mystery. His style is to distort what he sees." The Love Parade stands out as a fascinating addition to Pitol's unsolvable mysteries and glassy realism. Complete with a cantankerous bookseller, an array of monologue-sick characters (like Dante's dead), and a futile search for answers (or is it?), George Henson's new translation is sure to delight."
—Spencer Ruchti, Author Events Manager, Third Place Books
George Henson is a translator of contemporary Latin American prose and a 2021-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellow. His translations have appeared in many leading journals and magazines, including Granta, The Paris Review, World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, New England Review, among others. His eight book-length translations include Cervantes laureate Elena Poniatowska's The Heart of the Artichoke, Luis Jorge Boone's The Cannibal Night, Alberto Chimal's The Most Fragile Objects, and Cervantes laureate Sergio Pitol’s The Art of Flight, The Journey, The Magician of Vienna, Mephisto’s Waltz: Selected Short Stories, and, most recently, The Love Parade. His current projects include Living Venice, a memoir by Argentine novelist Abel Posse and Taming the Divine Heron, the second volume of Pitol's carnival triptych. George currently teaches Spanish translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.
Daniel Saldaña París is a novelist, essayist, and poet. Author of the novels Among Strange Victims (Coffee House Press, 2016) and Ramifications (Coffee House Press, 2020), he was recently awarded the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writers Award in the UK. His collection of personal essays Planes Flying Over a Monster is forthcoming next year.