
The Hive
Camilo Jose Cela(Author)
NYRB Classics (Publisher)
Will be published approx. on 7. March 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
296 pages
978-1-68137-615-8 (ISBN)
Description
"The translator Anthony Kerrigan has compared the work of Camilo Josâe Cela, the 1989 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to that of Louis-Ferdinand Câeline and Curzio Malaparte. These are, Kerrigan writes, "ferocious writers, truculent, badly spoken, foul mouthed." However provocative and disturbing, they are also flat-out dazzling as writers, whose sentences, as rigorous as riotous, lodge like knives in the reader's mind. Cela called himself a proponent of "uglyism," of "nothingism." But he has the knack, the critic Amâerico Castro reminds us, of deploying those "nothings and lacks" to construct beauty. The Hive is set over the course of a few days in the Madrid of 1943, not long after the end of the Spanish Civil War and when the regime of General Francisco Franco was at its most oppressive. The book includes more than three hundred characters whose comings and goings it tracks to hypnotic effect. Scabrous, scandalous, and profane, this virtuosic group portrait of a wounded and sick society was first published in Buenos Aires in 1950 because in Spain it could not be published at all. This new translation by James Womack is the first in English to present Cela's masterpiece in uncensored form"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
New York Review Books
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 199 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
308 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68137-615-8 (9781681376158)
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Persons
Camilo José Cela (1916–2002) won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1989. Though he wrote prolifically and audaciously in a number of different genres, he is best known for his novel The Hive, which was published in Argentina in 1951 after being banned in Franco's Spain. In addition to his writing, he produced drawings and paintings and also appeared in several films.
James Womack is a poet and a translator from Russian and Spanish. His most recent poetry collection, Homunculus, was published by the UK press Carcanet in 2020. His translations include Manuel Vilas's Heaven and a collection of poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky.
James Womack is a poet and a translator from Russian and Spanish. His most recent poetry collection, Homunculus, was published by the UK press Carcanet in 2020. His translations include Manuel Vilas's Heaven and a collection of poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky.