|
Marcelo Figueras Argentina
|
|
Marcelo Figueras was born in
In Kamchatka, Marcelo Figueras tells the moving story of ten-year-old
Harry whose parents are politically persecuted in the heat of 1980s Argentina.
They take him to a house in the country, pretending to play a game and bravely
trying to face a life deprived of everything they have known so far. In an
attempt to escape a world gone mad, Harry seeks consolation in his imagination.
In the end, though, all their precautions cannot save his parents… With simple
but beautiful language and subliminal humour, Figueras draws the reader into
the adolescent’s world.
In
this brilliant coming-of-age novel, Marcelo Figueras does not offer a
conventional portrait of Argentina’s brutal past. Instead, he focuses on the
personal rather than the political.
The
Independent
Figueras
– a bestseller across the Spanish-speaking world – writes with power and
insight about the ways in which a child uses imagination to make sense of
terrifying and baffling reality.
The
Times
A hopeful message about the healing process of
imagination and love.
The
New York Times
Marcelo Figueras’ Kamchatka is an extraordinary novel: Marvelling,
never know-alt, full of wonderful observations. A story hard to forget.
DIE WELT
Moving,
admirably narrated, beautiful and placid to read - Kamchatka is a special novel. Don’t miss it.
Babelia, El País
La
batalla del calentamiento ("The Warm-up Battle") is a fairy
tale-like story full of humour and spooky suspense. Pat and her daughter
Miranda have been moving around until they meet Teo,
who immediately falls in love with the beautiful Pat. But the three are by no
means ordinary people: Miranda has magical powers, and Teo
is a giant. And what exactly has Pat been running from? Did Miranda's father
really die as she claims?
Passion for stories
and fantasy fill the pages of La batalla del calentamiento.
ABC
La batalla del calentamiento has all the necessary
ingredients to make a de-manding reader happy.
Punto Noticias
“As silent as a fish,” they
say of people who cannot or will not talk for whatever reason. And the
protagonists of Marcelo Figuera's latest work move through the novel like fish
in an Aquarium: constrained in the
prison of their own speechlessness.
One of them is Ulises
Rosso, who sets out for
Parallel to this story we
follow Miriam and David, a couple who spent years trying for a child, only to
lose their baby after a premature birth. She withdraws into a world of fish,
which swim around like her “fish child” in its amniotic fluid. The couple are
drawn to the local aquarium over and over again - a habit that David keeps up
even after his wife's death, as a way to feel close to her.
And finally, the child
Danny plays a role. Irit takes him in after he is found on the street. He plays
dumb, rejects any physical contact and his only communication is through
drawings, usually of fish. That gives Irit the idea of taking Danny to the
aquarium - where they meet David.
Like in a play driven along
in acts by the individual characters, like in a waltz in three tempos, Figueras
has written a novel as dramatic as it is accomplished. He sketches out his
character's inability, regardless of their sex, age or cultural origin, to
express themselves in words, yet without refusing communication and loving
understanding in itself.
A wonderful book, dramatic,
moving, scarred by pain and loss, complex and intense, yet beyond the unhappy
end it has a much more important message: that of hope!
I have never
stopped believing that love wins.
Figueras in:
Crítica de la Argentina
In his novel Aquarium he appears to be convinced that
the only language that matters is that of kissing.
Crítica de la Argentina
With
sensitivity and lucidity, Aquarium
follows a flash of light of tolerant goodwill, of beauty- that brightens the
closed night through which we walk.
MinutoUno
Represented
for Alfaguara
Rights sold (selection):
Novels:
El muchacho peronista
Buenos
Aires: Planeta 1992, 285 p.
El espía del tiempo
Madrid:
Alfaguara 2002, 312 p.
France: Phébus 2004, Libella 2011 ●
German: Nagel & Kimche 2010 ● Poland:
Muza 2005
Kamchatka
Madrid:
Alfaguara 2003, 336 p.
Best
screen-play at the Havana Film Festival 2003
France:
Éditions du Panamá 2007 ● German: Nagel
& Kimche 2006, pb dtv
2008 ● Israel: Yedioth
2012 ● Netherlands: Signatuur 2007 ● Poland: Muza 2005 ● Russia:
Inostranka 2007 ● Serbia: Dereta ● Turkey:
Dogan ● UK: Atlantic 2010 ● US: Grove Atlantic 2011
La
batalla del calentamiento
Madrid:
Alfaguara 2007, 544 p.
German:
Nagel & Kimche 2008, dtv
2010 ● Netherlands: Signatuur 2009
Aquarium
Buenos Aires:
Alfaguara 2009, Madrid: Alfaguara 2011, 324 p.
Short
Prose:
El
año que viví en peligro, Madrid: Alfaguara 2007, 280 p.
(texts written for the blog El Boomeran(g))
Screen-plays:
Plata
quemada, 2000
Directed by
Marcelo Piñeyro
Goya Prize
for the Best Spanish Language Foreign Film 2001;
Selected by
L.A.Times as one of the Best 10 Films of the Year 2000
Kamchatka,
2002
Directed by
Marcelo Piñeyro
Best
screen-play at the Havana Film Festival 2003
Argentina’s
official submission for the 2002 Oscar Awards
Peligrosa
obsesión, 2004
Directed by
Raúl Rodríguez Peila
Rosario
Tijeras, 2005
Directed by
Emilio Maillé
Nominated
for the Goya Prize and for the Silver Ariel Award 2006
Las
viudas de los jueves, 2009
Directed by
Marcelo Piñeyro
El
espía del tiempo, to be adapted in Spain
For young readers:
Gus Weller rompe el molde, Madrid: Alfaguara 2006,
157 p.