Bezoar
And Other Unsettling Stories
Published on 11. August 2020
96 pages
978-1-60980-959-1 (ISBN)
Description
One of the most important and watched writers of today.
Intricately woven masterpieces of craft, mournful for their human cries in defiance of our sometimes less than human surroundings, Nettel's stories and novels are dazzlingly enjoyable to read for their deep interest in human foibles. Following on the critical successes of her previous books, here are six stories that capture her unsettling, obsessive universe. "Ptosis" is told from the point of view of the son of a photographer whose work involves before and after pictures of patients undergoing cosmetic eye surgeries. In "Through Shades," a woman studies a man interacting with a woman through the windows of the apartment across the street. In one of the longer stories, "Bonsai," a man visits a garden, and comes to know a gardener, during the period of dissolution of his marriage. "The Other Side of the Dock" describes a young girl in search of what she terms "True Solitude," who finds a fellow soul mate only to see the thing they share lose its meaning. In "Petals," a woman's odor drives a man to search for her, and even to find her, without quenching the thirst that is his undoing. And the title story, "Bezoar," is an intimate journal of a patient writing to a doctor. Each narrative veers towards unknown and dark corridors, and the pleasures of these accounts lie partly in the great surprise of the familiarity together with the strangeness.
Intricately woven masterpieces of craft, mournful for their human cries in defiance of our sometimes less than human surroundings, Nettel's stories and novels are dazzlingly enjoyable to read for their deep interest in human foibles. Following on the critical successes of her previous books, here are six stories that capture her unsettling, obsessive universe. "Ptosis" is told from the point of view of the son of a photographer whose work involves before and after pictures of patients undergoing cosmetic eye surgeries. In "Through Shades," a woman studies a man interacting with a woman through the windows of the apartment across the street. In one of the longer stories, "Bonsai," a man visits a garden, and comes to know a gardener, during the period of dissolution of his marriage. "The Other Side of the Dock" describes a young girl in search of what she terms "True Solitude," who finds a fellow soul mate only to see the thing they share lose its meaning. In "Petals," a woman's odor drives a man to search for her, and even to find her, without quenching the thirst that is his undoing. And the title story, "Bezoar," is an intimate journal of a patient writing to a doctor. Each narrative veers towards unknown and dark corridors, and the pleasures of these accounts lie partly in the great surprise of the familiarity together with the strangeness.
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08/2020
Seven Stories Press,U.S.
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The New York Times described GUADALUPE NETTEL's acclaimed English language debut collection, Natural Histories (Seven Stories, 2014), as "five flawless stories." A Bogotá 39 author and Granta "Best Untranslated Writer," Nettel has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Gilberto Owen National Literature Prize, the Antonin Artaud Prize, the Ribera del Duero Short Fiction Award, and the 2014 Herralde Novel Prize. Her novel, Still Born (Bloomsbury), was shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize. In 2015 Seven Stories published her first novel, The Body Where I Was Born. In 2018 her second novel, After the Winter, was published by Coffee House Press. Nettel lives and works in Mexico City.
Since the early 1970s SUZANNE JILL LEVINE has translated over forty volumes of Latin America's most innovative and distinguished fiction writers. The recipient of many honors, including several PEN awards, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (for her literary biography of Manuel Puig), she edited for Penguin Classics in 2010 the five-volume series of Jorge Luis Borges's poetry and essays. Her translation of Luis Negron's Mundo Cruel: Stories (Seven Stories Press) received the Lambda Fiction prize in 2014, and most recently she co-translated Cristina Rivera Garza's The Taiga Syndrome (2018) for the Dorothy Project.
Since the early 1970s SUZANNE JILL LEVINE has translated over forty volumes of Latin America's most innovative and distinguished fiction writers. The recipient of many honors, including several PEN awards, National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (for her literary biography of Manuel Puig), she edited for Penguin Classics in 2010 the five-volume series of Jorge Luis Borges's poetry and essays. Her translation of Luis Negron's Mundo Cruel: Stories (Seven Stories Press) received the Lambda Fiction prize in 2014, and most recently she co-translated Cristina Rivera Garza's The Taiga Syndrome (2018) for the Dorothy Project.
