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Daniel Guebel Argentina
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Daniel Guebel was born in Buenos Aires in
1956, where he works as a novelist, scriptwriter and playwright.
Set in the
heart of Malaysia, La perla del emperador (“The Emperor’s Pearl”) starts with the
visit of a mysterious Chinese man who offers a legendary pearl to a beautiful
white tradeswoman. In this novel, as in the Arabian
Nights, worlds appear and vanish in which the dream of immortality and a
love of travel are alive, and desire and melancholy pulsate. It is a labyrinth
in which Orient and Occident mix and become – in a new mirage – Argentinian.
Narration,
travel and oblivion are the three great powers of the metamorphosis with which La perla del
emperador takes us right into the heart of literature.
Alan
Pauls, Babel
Daniel
Guebel is quite possibly the best Argentinean
novelist of his generation.
Clarín
Carlos ‘Cacho’ Fracassi and Julio César
Carrera work as travelling salesmen of household appliances. Fracassi is the
sales star of the company, at once vulgar clown and charming confidence
trickster. Carrera, however, is shy, bald and boring, and couldn’t sell a mixer
to his own mother. Although the two are so different, they meet regularly over
a beer, and Carrera hangs on every word of his colleague’s boasts. Eventually,
Carrera comes up with the worst idea of his life: taking his wife’s nagging
seriously, he decides to prove to her that she has no
reasons to be jealous when he comes home late – and invites Fracassi round for
dinner. Mirtha, still an attractive redheaded beauty, is immediately taken in
by her husband’s colleague’s swagger, and it doesn’t take long before he ends
up in the marital bed as her lover. But this isn’t where the problems begin –
the problems begin shortly afterwards, when Fracassi falls in love with Mirtha,
and she tries to shake him off, already tired of him after their first intimate
encounter.
But it is not only Mirtha who puts this male friendship to the test, but
also the sale of the firm to a foreign investor who decides to shake-up their
long-accustomed habits. Carrera y Fracassi (“Carrera and Fracassi”) is a
modern-day picaresque novel that follows in the footsteps of Don Quixote and
Sancho Panza.
Carrera and Fracassi
is a surprising novel, a text which is at times venomous and at times moving;
sometimes cruel and coarse, but always shot through with pathos and a strange
aura of saintliness; a novel in which delirium represents the desperate and
comic search for redemption.”
El País
Daniel Guebel has
opted for a sarcastic register in order to depict modern Argentina. This
humorous perspective pervades the entire novel. ‘Carrera and Fracassi’ tells a
parodical and absurd tale and shows us a storyteller with a talent for satire
and sarcasm.
ABC
In Derrumbe (“Decay”) the reader
encounters a man - the narrator - who has hit rock bottom, who can be
considered a failure in all respects: As an author, as a partner, and as a
father. Having just been left by his wife Paula and their daughter Ana, he
finds himself devastated. Although deep down he had always
known. Brought up by relatives who taught him how to become a loser, the
teacher of writer’s workshops can hardly believe it when the beautiful young
student falls in love with him. And even if – it would never
work. She is by far too talented and beautiful to endure him in the long
run. And so he withdraws. But Paula shows such perseverance that they come
together after all. For a few years. And then – self
fulfilling prophecy – Paula sure enough parts from him.
Foreseeing what this may mean to a little girl – the parents not loving
her enough to stay together for her sake – he would most prefer to make his
farewell from Ana’s life with one clean cut, for her not to live in pain.
Thereby she could at least keep fond memories of him. An elevator accident
after a weekend visit is most accommodating: Although he survives, everyone
assumes him dead. Henceforth he scrapes a living as a run-down vagrant, at
times observing his daughter from concealment.
When Ana becomes an adult and celebrated surgeon, her leg-amputated
father compels a final encounter with her. And effectively, she recognises him
and greets him with the words: „Please, Dad, stop asking for compassion.“ The father, overwhelmed with joy, breaks out in tears.
The novel is a vivid, self-deprecating and anti machismo piece of
literature about a very personal destiny. On the other hand illustrated by the
fates of various artists in the
In the novel Derrumbe the writer, in first person, tries to exorcise
the pain of the lovelessness and the abandonment using a brilliant language, as
exhilarating as moving, seeing the humorous side in the pathetic.
revista 7 días
In
El Caso Voynich
(“The Voynich Case”), Daniel Guebel traces the course of the famous 16th
century Voynich Manuscript, written in an unknown language which NASA attempts
to decipher. He cleverly constructs an extraordinary, outrageous story, an
impossible combination of fiction and reality where events become mystical operations, and mysteries a resource for intelligence.
The recent
novel Ella (“She”) tells the story
of a failed marriage and a mysterious experience. Matías and Josefina are happy
with their three children until a miscarriage throws the entire family off
balance. When Matías admits to an affair, Josefina throws him out – and finds
solace in their common friend Julián. A final journey takes Matías to Japan,
where he hopes to find Julián’s secret formula for happiness.
This turn not only marks the author’s increased
maturity but also a new dimension in Guebel’s writing, which does not lose any
of its elegance. Ella is a
fundamental book which forms a second horizon for literature.
Perfil
For further
information, please visit also:
Rights:
Novels:
Arnulfo o los infortunios de un príncipe, Buenos Aires: Ed. de
la Flor 1987, 174 p.
La perla del emperador, Buenos
Aires: Emecé 1990, La Bestia Equilátera 2010, 283 p.
Los
elementales, Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo 1992; Buenos Aires: Norma 2001,
89 p.
Matilde, Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana 1994, 167 p.
Cuerpo Cristiano, Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica 1994, 194 p.
El terrorista, Buenos
Aires: Editorial Sudamericana 1998, 127 p.
Nina, Buenos Aires: Emecé 1999, 254 p.
El perseguido, Buenos Aires: Norma 2001, 188 p.
France: L’arbre
vengeur ● Spain:
El Desvelo 2012
La vida por Perón, Buenos Aires: Emecé 2004, 191 p.
Carrera
y Fracassi,
Spain: Caballo de Troya
2004, 316 p.
Buenos
Aires: Sudamericana 2005 • Italy: La Linea
Derrumbe, Buenos Aires: Mondadori, 2007, 188 p.
El caso Voynich, Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia 2009, 118 p.
Ella, Buenos Aires: Mondadori 2010, 190 p.
Stories:
El ser querido, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1992, 170 p.
Los padres de Sherezade, Buenos Aires: Eterna Cadencia 2008, 110 p.
Italy: La Lepre
Short
prose:
Mis
escritores muertos,
Buenos Aires: Mansalva 2009, 62 p.
Plays:
Adiós mein Führer, Buenos Aires: Norma 1992, 123 p.
Dos
obras ordinarias (Daniel Guebel
and Sergio Bizzio) Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo 1994