Staff Pick
Thanks to City Lights, the only novel written by the author that Borges called "one of our best" is finally available in English translation. Ocampo shows us the self as a spiraling cavern lined with the mirrors of other people. It's a terrifyingly beautiful and perfectly confounding sight. Recommended By Adie B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A dying woman's attempt to recount the story of her life reveals the fragility of memory and the illusion of identity.
A woman traveling on a transatlantic ship has fallen overboard. Adrift at sea, she makes a promise to Saint Rita, "arbiter of the impossible," that if she survives, she will write her life story. As she drifts, she wonders what she might include in the story of her life--a repertoire of miracles, threats, and people parade tumultuously through her mind. Little by little, her imagination begins to commandeer her memories, escaping the strictures of realism.
Translated into English for the very first time, The Promise showcases Silvina Ocampo at her most feminist, idiosyncratic and subversive. Ocampo worked quietly to perfect this novella over the course of twenty-five years, nearly up until the time of her death in 1993. The narrator's conflicted memory, as well as the intrusion of memories that are not her own, illustrate Ocampo's struggle with dementia in the last years of her life, and much like the author herself, here we find a narrator writing "against a world of conventional ideas."
Review
"Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious." Jorge Luis Borges
Review
"This haunting and vital final work from Ocampo, her only novel, is about a woman's life flashing before her eyes when she's stranded in the ocean. . ...the book's true power is its depiction of the strength of the mind and the necessity of storytelling, which for the narrator is literally staving off death. Ocampo's portrait of one woman's interior life is forceful and full of hope." Gabe Habash, Starred Review, Publishers Weekly
Review
"Ocampo is beyond great--she is necessary." Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance
Review
"Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor." Alberto Manguel
Review
"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us." Italo Calvino
Review
"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it." Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread
Review
"A woman examines her life piecemeal, putting it together like a puzzle missing half its pieces--but the resulting image is all the more mesmerizing because of it. A deft and subtle novel that holds together as airily as a spider's web." Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World: Stories
"Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious."--Jorge Luis Borges
"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."--Italo Calvino
"Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor."--Alberto Manguel
"Silvina Ocampo's prose is made of elegant pleasures and delicate terrors. Her stories take place in a liquid, viscous reality, where innocence quietly bleeds into cruelty, and the mundane seeps, unnoticed, into the bizarre. Revered by some of the masters of fantastic literature, such as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, Ocampo is beyond great--she is necessary."--Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University
"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."--Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread
"Of all the words that could define her, the most accurate is, I think, ingenious."--Jorge Luis Borges
"I don't know of another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don't show us."--Italo Calvino
"Few writers have an eye for the small horrors of everyday life; fewer still see the everyday marvelous. Other than Silvina Ocampo, I cannot think of a single writer who, at any time in any language, has chronicled both with such wise and elegant humor."--Alberto Manguel
"Silvina Ocampo's prose is made of elegant pleasures and delicate terrors. Her stories take place in a liquid, viscous reality, where innocence quietly bleeds into cruelty, and the mundane seeps, unnoticed, into the bizarre. Revered by some of the masters of fantastic literature, such as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, Ocampo is beyond great--she is necessary."--Hernan Diaz, author of In the Distance and Associate Director of the Hispanic Institute at Columbia University
"Like William Blake, Ocampo's first voice was that of a visual artist; in her writing she retains the will to unveil immaterial so that we might at least look at it if not touch it."--Helen Oyeyemi, author of Gingerbread
About the Author
Silvina Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1903. A central figure of Argentine literary circles, Ocampo's accolades include Argentina’s National Poetry Prize and a Guggenheim fellowship. She was an early contributor to Argentina’s Sur magazine, where she worked closely with its founder, her sister; Adolfo Bioy Casares, her husband; and Jorge Luis Borges. In 1937, Sur published Ocampo’s first book, Viaje olvidado. She went on to publish thirteen volumes of fiction and poetry during a long and much-lauded career. Ocampo died in Buenos Aires in 1993. La promesa, her only novel, was posthumously published in 2011.
Suzanne Jill Levine is General Editor of Penguin’s paperback classics of Jorge Luis Borges’ poetry and essays, and a noted translator of Latin American prose and poetry by distinguished writers such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Fuentes, Jose Donoso, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Director of Translation Studies at UCSB, Levine is author of several books including The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction, Manuel Puig and the Spiderwoman: His Life and Fictions. Her most recent published translation is Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Taiga Syndrome (The Dorothy Project, 2018).
Jessica Powell has published dozens of translations of literary works by a wide variety of Latin American writers. She was the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship in support of her translation of Antonio Benítez Rojo's novel, Woman in Battle Dress (City Lights, 2015), which was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Her translation of Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya (Mandel Vilar Press, 2016), was named a finalist for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award and made the longlist for the 2017 National Translation Award. Her translation of Pablo Neruda’s book-length poem, venture of the infinite man, was published by City Lights Books in October 2017. Her most recent translation, of Edna Iturralde’s award-winning book, Green Was My Forest, was published by Mandel Vilar Press in September, 2018.