Affections - Softcover

Hasbún, Rodrigo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 150115480X ISBN 13: 9781501154805

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2018

Synopsis

The award-winning and haunting novel from Rodrigo Hasbún, the literary star Jonathan Safran Foer calls, "a great writer," about an unusual family's breakdown--set in South America during the time of Che Guevara and inspired by the life of Third Reich cinematographer Hans Ertl.

Inspired by real events, Affections is the story of the eccentric, fascinating Ertl clan, headed by the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once the cameraman for the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Shortly after the end of World War II, Hans and his family flee to Bolivia to start over. There, the ever-restless Hans decides to embark on an expedition in search of the fabled lost Inca city of Paitití, enlisting two of his daughters to join him on his outlandish quest into the depths of the Amazon, with disastrous consequences.

"A one-sitting tale of fragmented relationships with a broad scope, delivered with grace and power" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Affections traces the Ertls's slow and inevitable breakdown through the various erratic trajectories of each family member: Hans's undertakings of colossal, foolhardy projects and his subsequent spectacular failures; his daughter Monika, heir to his adventurous spirit, who joins the Bolivian Marxist guerrillas and becomes known as "Che Guevara's avenger"; and his wife and two younger sisters left to pick up the pieces in their wake. "Hasbún writes with patience and precision, revealing the family's most intimate thoughts and interactions: first smokes, blind love, and familial devotion. This is a novel to savor for its richness and grace and its historical and political scope" (Booklist, starred review)--a masterfully layered tale of how a family's voyage of discovery ends up eroding the affections that once held it together.

About this title

Review:

PRAISE FOR RODRIGO HASBUN:

"He is not a good writer, thank goodness. He is a great one." --Jonathan Safran Foer

"In Affections, a family elegy is woven into an epitaph for the radical politics of South America and the result is an act of literary hypnosis you won't soon forget." --Adam Haslett, bestselling author of Imagine Me Gone

"Beautifully translated by Sophie Hughes, Affections is a richly atmospheric and evocative portrait of fractured familial bonds that takes the reader into the darkness where the protagonists dwell." --The National (UK)

"With a direct, unvarnished style, harsh in some way, but with a great sense of rhythm, the author hooks the reader until the very ending of the novel, which is unexpected as much as suspended." --Marco Ostoni, La lettura - Corriere della Sera (Italy)

"A short but powerful novel. . . rendered beautifully by translator Sophie Hughes." -Words Without Borders

"A slim, striking novel." --The New York Times Book Review

"A compact and evocative historical novel. . .Hasbun has crafted an intriguing tale that ably bridges a pair of indelible historical moments. Lots of novels plumb the intersection of the personal and the political, but few have this kind of intellectual helf and emotional subtlety." --World Literature in Review

PRAISE FOR AFFECTIONS:

"Dark, deep, disturbing. No concessions, no sweeteners: here everything hurts. Through this ably crafted family saga, Hasbún manages to explore the permanent conflicts and contradictions of a whole nation." --Andrés Neuman, author of Travel of the Century

"Concise yet wild, haunting yet exuberantly full of life, Rodrigo Hasbún's Affections achieves all sorts of artful, intoxicating contradictions. What a gloriously unpredictable book." --Idra Novey, author of Ways to Disappear

"A dark, stunning novel, Affections is charged by a brilliant kaleidoscope of perspectives, the voices of exiles, a post-war German family in Bolivia. Hasbún has spun a tale of displacement, of political turmoil, in which the characters' motives are as complicated as the Bolivian jungle they explore. It's a fascinating book." --Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy

About the Author:

Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian novelist living and working in Houston. In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine for Bogotá39, and in 2010 he was named one of Granta's Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists. He is the author of a previous novel and a collection of short stories, two of which have been made into films, and his work has appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, Zoetrope: All-Story, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Affections received an English PEN Award and has been published in twelve languages.

Sophie Hughes has translated novels by several contemporary Latin American and Spanish authors, including award-winning Laia Jufresa and Rodrigo Hasbún. Her translations and writing have been published in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, Literary Hub, and The White Review, among others. In 2017 Sophie was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 150115480X
• ISBN 13: 9781501154805
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144