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More copies of this ISBN:Senselessnessby Horacio Castellanos Moya
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Senselessness is the first of Castellanos Moya's novels to be translated into English, and though short, it manages to cast a wide net that demands as much from the reader as it does from its central character. In an unnamed Latin American country that resembles Castellanos Moya's own El Salvador, a man is asked to clean up a 1,100-page report on the massacre of the region's indigenous peoples. As he makes his way through the work, he begins to find himself haunted by the gruesome and yet strangely resigned testimonials of the survivors; as a result, he can hardly reconcile the past with the mundane interactions that now occur everyday between the former torturers and their victims. Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:A Rainmaker Translation Grant winner from the Black Mountain Institute. Senselessness, acclaimed Salvadoran author Horacio Castallanos Moya's astounding debut in English, explores horror with hilarity and electrifying panache. A boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger — after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country. Review:"The first of exiled Honduran novelist Moya's eight fictions to be translated in the U.S., this crushing satire has at its center a feisty young unnamed writer in penurious political exile from an unnamed Latin American country. It opens as he explains the daunting and dangerous freelance job he has taken in an also-unnamed neighboring state: to edit a 1,100-page report prepared for the country's Catholic archdiocese that details the current military regime's torture and murder of thousands of indigenous villagers. The writer despises the Church, but is moved and agitated by the disturbing testimonies of the survivors, at once unspeakable in their horror and unforgettable in their phrasing: 'the more they killed, the higher they rose up.' More or less one long rant, the book's paragraphs go on for pages as the writer gives way to paranoia, and to a sexual longing that his loneliness and powerlessness make nearly unbearable, and that he expresses profanely. It's Moya's genius to make this difficult character seem a product of the same death and disorder documented in the report, as the survivors' voices merge with his own." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"Castellanos Moya's vertices are horror, corruption, and an ordinariness that trembles on every single page he has written, and makes the reader tremble as well." Roberto Bolano Synopsis:Acclaimed Salvadoran author Moya's astounding debut in English has a peculiarly lighthearted, and in fact comic air even as it is tormented by the violence of history ("El Pais"). Synopsis:A Rainmaker Translation Grant Winner from the Black Mountain Institute: Senselessness, acclaimed Salvadoran author Horacio Castallanos Moya's astounding debut in English, explores horror with hilarity and electrifying panache.
About the AuthorHoracio Castellanos Moya was born 1957 in Honduras. He has lived in San Salvador, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico (where he spent ten years as a journalist, editor, and political analyst), Spain, and Germany. In 1988 he won the National Novel Prize from Central American University for his first novel. His work has been published and translated in England, Germany, El Salvador and Costa Rica. He has published eight books and is now part of the City of Asylum project in Pittsburgh and will teach in fall 2008 at the University of Pennsylvania.
Katherine Silver won a PEN Translation Fund Award and an NEA grant for this stunningly vivid translation. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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