|
Ana María Shua Argentina
|
|
Ana María Shua was born in Buenos Aires in 1951. She studied
literature at the University of Buenos Aires and has been working in
advertising and as a journalist. Shua’s children
books have been a great success in Argentina and Korea and she is regarded as
the Queen of Microfiction in the Spanish speaking
world. Important literary awards are the recognition of her work.
Shua’s novels are a
humorous, often sarcastic portrait of the Argentinian society. Her first novel Soy
paciente (“I am a Patient” or “I am patient”) describes the daily life in
hospital, the miserable standards of health care, and in a sarcastic, ironical
way, illustrates the bureaucracy which forces a helpless person to be a patient
patient, an exhilarating allegory [...]. A terrific first
novel. (Kirkus,
1997). Two of her novels have been made into films, and some of her
stories were translated into German, French, English and Dutch.
In 1991 followed the ironic
portrait of the Argentinian husband, El marido argentino promedio (“The
average Argentinian Husband”) which immediately became a bestseller. The Jewish
emigration into the promising New World is the theme of El libro de los
recuerdos (“The Book of Memories”), Shua’s third novel, written with a
grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. Buenos Aires is
also the scenery of Shua’s latest novel La muerte como
efecto secundario (“Death as a Side-Effect”), in the year 2002 plus x:
However oppressive the scenario may seem, Ana María Shua has nevertheless
succeeded in writing an engaging sensitively observed novel about human
relationships, about the difficulty of forgiving and the opportunity it offers.
With great tenderness the author makes a first-class, vehement, literary plea
for the dignity of man as inviolable, always, even in the year 2002 plus x. A shockingly topical book.
Such an
unusual, great and sometimes disturbing work has not been published in our
language for many years.
INTERVIÚ,
Spain
Shua’s new novel, El peso
de la tentación (The Weight of Temptation), is set in the near future and
takes on the ever-expanding cult of the body-beautiful and dieting that is
gripping the industrialised world.
The life of the 43 year-old
main character, Marina, seems to be running smoothly. Nobody suspects that her
every waking thought is focused on her next meal, turning daily life into a
torment. From her childhood onwards, her relationship with food has been
manipulated. On the one hand, her mother has always badgered her to eat well
and plenty, but at the same time she wants to have a slim and willowy daughter.
By the time she gets married, she has tried out every imaginable form of
dieting and therapy. When she has to give up the diet pills for medical
reasons, she loses control and puts on more than 30 kilos.
Her husband Tomás loves her
all the same, but he has lost his sexual desire for her. So Marina decides to
resort to a last-ditch solution: she scrapes together all of her money and goes
to the private slimming institute Las Espigas, in full knowledge that she will
have to spend at least three months in the institute, fully isolated from the
outside world. The methods of the charismatic head of the institute – known to
all only as the Professor – are somewhat questionable and do not always respect
his patients’ dignity. The educational measures include clamping solitary
confinement or torture with electric shocks.
As Marina’s release date
approaches, the youngsters attempt a rebellion, and the power relations in the
institute are set to be turned upside-down...
In this novel, Shua exposes
the background to a vicious circle of hunger and obsessive slimming, to which
increasing numbers of people are falling victim, and does so forcefully, with a
sense of humour and a good deal of empathy. Here, hunger also stands for
unfulfilled wishes, against the backdrop of the question of how free people
are, or the extent to which they subjugate themselves to authority or orders.
El peso de la tentación is a precise, gracious,
acerbic, entertaining novel, the latest in a series of recent texts in which
literature is beginning to investigate a disorder whose history is, in many
ways, only just beginning.
Patricio Lennard,
Página/12
In her latest volume of microfiction, Fenómenos de circo (“Circus Freaks”), Ana María
Shua toys with the fascination of dissimilar
sensations like melancholy and astonishment, sadness and enchantment, playing
to the readers’ most innate fears and hopes. With her characteristic large
doses of irony and imagination, in stories of famous circus artists and events
based on true facts Shua combines the world’s
paradoxes with the preciseness of language that renders her stories so unique.
In this magnificent circus
of microfiction, the author hurls round nouns into the
air, juggles masterfully with verbs and lashes out with her whip until the
words start leaping through rings of fire of their own accord.
Silvina Friera
Ana María
Shua has written a marvelous book. Her greatest
achievement is turning the reader into a privileged spectator as well.
Página 12
Original
editions and rights sold:
Novels:
Soy paciente,
Buenos Aires: Losada, 1980; Sudamericana
1996, 134 p.
Italy: Giunti 1997 ● US: Latin
American Literary Review Press 1997
Los amores de Laurita, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1984, 196 p.
Film directed by Anonio Ottone 1986
Germany: Peter Hammer 1992, dtv pb
1995 ● Italy: Semilla
El marido argentino promedio, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1992, 215 p.
El libro de los recuerdos, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1994, 200 p.
Italy: Poiesis 2011 ● US:
New Mexico Press 1998
La muerte como efecto secundario, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1997, Emecé 2008, 260 p.
Brazil: Globo 2004 ● Spain:
Sudamericana 2002 ●
US: Nebraska Press 2010
El peso de la tentación, Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2007, 266 p.
Serbia: Laguna ● US:
Nebraska Press
Short prose
(selection):
Los días de pesca, Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1981,
173 p.
Viajando se conoce gente, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1988, 142 p.
Sabiduría popular judía, Córdoba: Ameghino 1997, 238 p.
Brazil: Relume Dumará 2005
El libro de las mujeres,
Buenos Aires: Alfaguara 2005, 531 p.
Que tengas una vida interesante,
Buenos Aires: Emecé 2009, 298 p.
Cuidado que hay trampa. Cuentos del
mundo sobre trampas y tramposos,
Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 2009, 92 p.
Mini
fictions:
Casa de geishas, Buenos Aires:
Sudamericana 1992, 245 p.
Spain: Thule Ediciones 2007
Botánica del caos, Buenos
Aires: Sudamericana 2000, 245 p.
France: equi-librio 2008
Temporada de fantasmas,
Madrid: Páginas de Espuma 2004, 132 p.
France: Cataplum 2010
Cazadores de letras. Minificción reunida, Madrid: Páginas de Espuma 2009, 870 p.
Selection:
Taiwan:
Suncolor 2012 (Incl. Hongkong & Macau) ● US:
University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books 2009
Fenómenos
de circo, Buenos Aires: Emecé 2011,
190 p.
English translation available
Spain: Páginas de Espuma
2011 ●US: Hanging Loose
Press
Participation in anthologies:
Abécédaire incomplet de l'humour juif,
France: Folies d’Encre 2011
For
children (selection):
Caracol presta su casa,
Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 2003, 32 p.
Armenia: Librarius ● US: MacGraw
Hill 2007
Expedición al Amazonas, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1988, 2003,
57 p.
Korea: Goodmother 2005
La fábrica del terror, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1990, 1996,
114 p.
Korea: Baum Publishing 2005 ● Mexico: Montena 2008 ●
Spain: Montena 2006
La puerta para salir del mundo, Buenos Aires: Sudamericana 1992, 59 p.
Armenia: Librarius ● Brazil:
Global 2001 ● Korea:
Darim 2006
Cuentos judíos con fantasmas y demonios,
Mexico-City: Alfaguara 2003, 152 p.
Miedo de noche, Buenos
Aires: Sudamericana 2006, 64 p.
Una plaza un poco rara,
Buenos Aires: Alfaguara 2008, 25 p.
Illustrations by Luciana Feito