From a legendary cult figure in Latin American literature, the story of a writer who obsessively observes his own handwriting in search of answers about his identity.An eccentric novelist begins to keep a notebook of handwriting exercises, hoping that if he’s able to improve his penmanship, his personal character will also improve. What begins as a mere physical exercise becomes involuntarily colored by humorous reflections and tender anecdotes about living, writin...

'Perhaps the luminous novel is this thing that I started writing today; just now. Maybe these sheets of paper are a warm-up exercise. […] But it's quite possible that if I go on writing – as I usually do – with no plan; although this time I know very well what I want to say; things will start to take shape; to come together. I can feel the familiar taste of a literary adventure in my throat. I'll take that as confirmation; then; and start describing what I think was the beginning of my spi...

A buoyant account of the nightly tug-of-war between a sleepy father and his son, and the richly imaginative "sleepy stories" they createEach story told in Sleepy Stories drifts deeper into a beguiling dream world, telling of an elastic gentleman who stretches his body across town to effortlessly slip into bed, or of another sleepy young man who curls inside an upside-down umbrella to take a snooze. In Diego Bianki's magical universe, the waking world is ma...

In The Portable Museum, readers will discover extraordinary and unexpected short stories by some of the best authors from Spain and Latin America:Hebe Uhart brings her astute observational skills and dry humor to bear on the world of academia in provincial Argentina in "The Event Planner." "The Boarding House," by Uruguayan cult favorite Mario Levrero, chronicles a young man's search for independence in prose as labyrinthine and strange as his quir...

The debut work in English by Mexico's greatest and most influential living author and winner of the Cervantes Prize ("the Spanish language Nobel"), The Art of Flight takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the world's cultural capitals as Sergio Pitol looks back on his well-traveled life as a legendary author, translator, scholar, and diplomat.The first work in Pitol's "Trilogy of Memory," The Art of Flight imaginatively blends the genres of fiction and memoir in ...

The novel that inspired the film starring James Franco and Seth Rogen: "One of a kind . . . a funny, unnervingly surreal page turner" ( Newsweek).Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post Book World, Newsweek, and the Los Angeles Times Book ReviewZeroville centers on the story of Vikar, a young architecture student so enthralled with the movies that his friends call him " cinéautistic

A young mother in Mexico City, captive to a past that both overwhelms and liberates her, and a house she cannot abandon nor fully occupy, writes a novel of her days as a translator living in New York.A young translator, adrift in Harlem, is desperate to translate and publish the works of Gilberto Owen, an obscure Mexican poet who lived in Harlem during the 1920s, and whose ghostly presence haunts her in the city’s subways. And Gilberto Owen, dying in Philadelphia i...

Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middleclass housing development in a suburb of Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle Raúl.In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few ...

Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back. Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survi...

Shortlisted and named "a very close contender" for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction PrizeA novel of philosophy and love, politics and waltzes, history and the here-and-now, Andrés Neuman's Traveller of the Century is a journey into the soul of Europe, penned by one of the most exciting South-American writers of our time. 'Every year hundreds of books are published but rarely comes a book that reminds us of why we loved reading in the first place, that innermost quest for words and drea...

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNERTHE POSTHUMOUS MASTERWORK FROM "ONE OF THE GREATEST AND MOST INFLUENTIAL MODERN WRITERS" (JAMES WOOD, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW)Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes...

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One of the most revered voices in literature today gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.“Mesmerizing, immersive, hallucinogenic.”—Entertainment WeeklyColorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us...