Synopses & Reviews
The latest from one of Granta's best Spanish-language novelists shows the struggle between private and official biographies, and the fleeting nature of collective happiness.
By blinking his eyes and moving his pupils, a paraplegic man--the onetime vocalist in a famous rock band--composes a kind of anti-biography that is corrected and expanded upon by an unknown editor. Alternating between the vocalist's impressionistic recollections and the editor's "corrections," an asynchronous story emerges, evoking the vocalist's childhood in southern Chile and telling of the rise and fall of the band that he grew up to lead, while hinting at a multiplicity of other narrative possibilities.
Review
" . . [W]hat we encounter in Loquela is a skillful unmaking—complete with diary excerpts, missives from beyond the grave and an invented barn-burning manifesto on a literary movement, 'Corporalism,' which seeks to breathe life into the 'corpse' of literature—that manages to offer new ways of thinking about what the novel can do." Laird Hunt, L.A. Times
Review
"Begins to fuck with your head from its very first word." Toby Litt
Review
"Navidad & Matanza could be the hallucinogenic amalgamation of a César Aira plot with setting and characters conceived by Bolaño if written using Oulipo-style constraints. . . . With ample imagination and commanding style, Navidad & Matanza certainly marks Labbé as a young author from whom we ought to anticipate great, fascinating things to come." Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books
Review
"[Loquela] is drenched in the spirit of experimentality, dry and absurd humor, strangeness and intrigue." Simone Wolff, Bookslut
About the Author
Carlos Labbé, one of Granta's "Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists," was born in Chile and is the author of seven novels, including Navidad & Matanza and Loquela, and three collections of short stories. In addition to his writings he is a musician, and has released three albums. He is a co-editor at Sangria, a publishing house based in Santiago and Brooklyn, where he translates and runs workshops. He also writes literary essays, the most notable ones on Juan Carlos Onetti, Diamela Eltit and Roberto Bolaño. Three of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.
Will Vanderhyden received an MA in Literary Translation Studies from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labbé, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Marsé, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Rodrigo Fresán, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate Rodrigo Fresán's novel, The Invented Part, which won the 2018 Best Translated Book Award.