American - Author | August 6, 1969 -
I'm always reading a novel. If it's good, I remember why I love my job.
Alvaro Enrigue
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Vivian Abenshushan and Veronica Gerber write brilliant books that defy generic conventions.
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I read everything from comics to magazines to fiction - I learned to read in English, years before being able to speak a word of it, by reading 'National Geographic.'
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My definition of freedom is still ruled by the reluctance to live a conventional life, from Emilio Salgari's pirates.
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I don't write historical novels but novels that wonder, 'And what if it happened in this way and not in this other one?'
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Writing is so fun precisely because if you take out the right adjective, the readers can decide what kind of book is in their hands. Suspension of disbelief should not be mandatory in contemporary writing.
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History is like Santa Claus: a language construction. We have some registers about the existence of Santa and history - the presents under the tree, the archives - but none have really seen them.
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Walter Benjamin used to think that languages expand their register thanks to translation, because translation forces ways of using words and structures that were alien to the original speaker of the target language.
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Fidel Castro's most scandalous show trial was not mounted against a political figure but against a writer: Heberto Padilla. In 1971, after 38 days of detention, Mr. Padilla was forced to 'confess' at the Cuban writers' union to the charges of 'subversive activities.'
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'Flaubert's Parrot' is an amphibious book in which what appears to be a personal essay about Flaubertian writing is gradually, delicately transformed into an extremely sad novel in which the differences between character, author, and narrator are less clear than they appear at first glance.
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In 'Dublinesque', Spanish writer Enrique Vila-Matas inverts the terms of Joyce's 'Ulysses' and tells the story of a man who, after living a hyperkinetic life like those of Odysseus and Leopold Bloom, resolves to never leave his room again and to reduce his mental activity to a minimum.
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In 'Where the Air is Clear', Carlos Fuentes composed a polyphonic portrait of Mexico City amid the growth and modernization brought on by the economic boom of the 1950s. The novel can be read as a jazz interpretation - free and in a Mexican key - of John Dos Passos' 'Manhattan Transfer'.
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