Natural Histories : Stories - Softcover

Guadalupe Nettel; J.T. Lichtenstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1609806050 ISBN 13: 9781609806057

Publisher: Seven Stories Press, 2015

Synopsis

In a world where the ordinary is unsettling and the grotesque is exquisite, a parade of animals shows us what it means to be human. Examining the traits and fates of cats and snakes illuminates our own experience; from desire and impulse to cruelty and love. In each tightly woven tale, Nettel creates a space in which her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves irrevocably within us.

About this title

Review:

"Five flawless stories ... Nettel creates marvelous parallels between the sorrows and follies of her human characters and the creatures they live with."--Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times

"The gaze [Nettel] turns on madnesses both temperate and destructive, on manias, on deviances, is so sharp that it has us seeing straight into our own obsessions."--Xavier Houssain, Le Monde

"Guadalupe Nettel is one of the most interesting voices of the new Mexican fiction."--J.A. Masoliver Ródenas, La Vanguardia

"Seasoned readers will delight in this literary voice, new to the landscape of Latin American literature, a voice sophisticated as it is original."--Arcadia

"Guadalupe Nettel reveals the subliminal beauty within beings of odd behavior and painstakingly examines the intimacies of her soul."--Magazine Littéraire

"It has been a long time since I've found in the literature of my generation a world as personal and untransferable as that of Guadalupe Nettel."--Juan Gabriel Vásquez

"The career of this young storyteller is worth keeping an eye on. A master of style, with a marvelous poetic naturalism, her ideas and manners distinguish her from what we are accustomed to in Mexican literature."--Joaquin Marco, El Cultural

"Guadalupe Nettel's stories treat us with a gentle irony--skillfully translated by JT Lichtenstein--to the secret correspondences between the surface of nature's quirky wisdom (from cats to fungi) and the sad, funny, fragile, resilient human condition. The epigraph from Pliny the Elder cuts to the core of these magnetic pieces, each discrete and yet somehow connecting: 'All animals know what it is they need, except for man.'"--Suzanne Jill Levine, University of California at Santa Barbara

"Beautifully translated from the Spanish by J. T. Lichtenstein Natural Histories delivers everything you want from a short story collection. Guadalupe Nettel's storytelling power is majestic. With an unflinching eye, time and time again, she drives readers on an exploratory safari into the heart of human nature. Funny, touching, terrifying, horrific and/or sad-you never know what you'll find when you tentatively set out in search of potential dangers, but one thing is abundantly clear: safe in her skilled hands, each journey holds the promise of being a life changing event."--Typographical Era

"These stories are an interesting, arresting study of how their lives mirror our own."--Gretchen Wagner, San Francisco Book Review

"One that stood out for me in particular among these very good books is Natural Histories by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by J. T. Lichtenstein. Nettel is a wonderful Mexican writer, and each of the stories in this slim collection, published by Seven Stories, takes a wry philosophical look at the relationship between people and the creatures they live with - whether a pair of pet fish or an infestation of cockroaches."--Jonathan Lee, Electronic Literature

About the Author:

One of the most talked-about writers of contemporary Mexican fiction, GUADALUPE NETTEL is a Bogotá 39 author and Granta "Best Untranslated Writer." Her novels and collections of short stories have received international critical acclaim and won awards in both Europe and Latin America, including the Mexican Gilberto Owen National Literature Prize and the Antonin Artaud Prize. Natural Histories, for which she won the 2013 Ribera del Duero Short Fiction Award, and her novel The Body Where I was Born (Seven Stories Press, 2015) are her first books to be published in English. Nettel lives in Mexico City.

About this edition

• Publisher: Seven Stories Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1609806050
• ISBN 13: 9781609806057
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128