NEWS

 

The Polish press is absolutely enthusiastic about David Toscana. The prestigious newspaper Wprost just stated: “Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes have a worthy successor: David Toscana”.

 

Claudia Piñeiro has just been awarded the renowned German LiBeraturpreis for her novel Elena sabe (“Elena Knows”), which is voted by the readers themselves. The prize is destined for female authors from Latin America, Asia and Africa and has already been given to prestigious authors like Andrea Blanqué, Carmen Boullosa, Assia Djebar, Mayra Montero, Zoé Valdés and Yvonne Vera. The ceremony will be held on October 3rd in Frankfurt, and on October 5th, a reading will take place in the House of Literature Frankfurt.

 

 

 

We have great news: For the second time, Brazil will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2013! More detailed information shall follow soon.

You are also welcome to visit the Frankfurt Book Fair’s web site: https://en.book-fair.com/fbf/

 

 

 

José Saramago's novel A viagem do elefante ("The Elephant's Journey") has just been anounced in Great Britain with a huge book crossing campaign sponsored by Vintage: During June, there will be elephants all over London, advertising the book at all the central spots.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/

 

The renowned literary magazine Transcript just published an excerpt of the English translation of Rui Zink’s novel O destino turístico (“The Tourist Destination”) by the famous Margaret Jull Costa, as well as the German version by Michael Kegler.

For more information please visit:

http://www.transcript-review.org/en

http://www.transcript-review.org/de

 

Ondjaki has just been nominated for the São Paulo Literature Award 2010, together with Chico Buarque and João Ubaldo Ribeiro. The winners will be announced on August 2nd in São Paulo.

He has also been awarded the Juvenile-infantile Prize 2009 of the Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil with his book AvóDezanove e o segredo do soviético (“Grandma Dezanove and the Soviet Secret”).

 

We have more good news: Henry Trujillo's novel Tres buitres (“Three Vultures”) is handled as the latest recommendation for German publishers in the Weltempfänger, the literary top list selected by litprom, the Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature. The jury consisting of Ilja Trojanow and Thomas Wörtche, among others, called Tres buitres "a very global book" and praised its "incomplicated virtuosity."

 

We are proud to inform you that José Saramago's novel Ensaio sobre a lucidez ("Seeing") has been selected as one of the top ten books dealing with elections in literature by The Guardian. Next to Saramago as the only author not writing in English are mentioned William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Henry James.

To read the whole article, please visit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk

 

More good news: Irene Vilar has just received the Independent Publisher Book Award for her memoir Impossible Motherhood. The ceremony took place in New York on May 25th.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.independentpublisher.com

 

We are happy to tell you that Héctor Abad Faciolince has just been awarded the Prémio Literário Casa da América Latina/Banif 2010 for his novel El olvido que seremos (“Forgotten We Shall Be”). The prize is destinated to the best Latinamerican work published in Portugal and dotated with 10.000 Euros. It will be awarded in Lisbon.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.c-americalatina.pt

 

Good news: The short film “The Slow Mirror” based on a short story by Richard Zimler has just been awarded the Best Drama by the New York Downtown Short Film Festival.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.constablerobinson.com

 

We are happy to tell you that the movie inspired in Sergio Bizzio’s novel Rabia (“Rage”) will be released in Spain on the 28th of May, in France on the 6th of June, and in Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador it will start in September.

 

We have more great news: Irene Vilar has just been awarded a fellowship of one year in the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation! The grant consists of $49,000 and is given to candidates who have shown a great creative talent in the arts.

 

We are proud to inform you that El Teatro Argentino de La Plata is going to perform José Pablo Feinmann’s Timote as opera in 2011, with Marcelo Lombardero as stage director and Oscar Golijov as composer.

 

We would like to share the great news with you that Impossible Motherhood by Irene Vilar is among the finalists for the 2009 Foreword Book of the Year Award, as well as El último lector (“The Last Reader”) by David Toscana.

For more information, please visit:

Irene Vilar:

www.bookoftheyearawards.com/autobiography-memoir

David Toscana:

www.bookoftheyearawards.com/fiction-literary

 

We are proud to inform you that Thursday Night Widows (Las viudas de los jueves), the best seller novel by Claudia Piñeiro, is long-listed for this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize! The film of the same name by Marcelo Piñeyro, after counting with a record of spectators in Argentina, has just been released in Spain.
For more information, please visit:

http://www.independent.co.uk/books/

 

We are proud to inform you that Mario Vargas Llosa has written a hymn of praise on Héctor Abad Faciolince's book El olvido que seremos (Forgotten We Shall Be) in El País, calling it his “most enthralling reading experience of recent years.”

Vargas Llosa was equally smitten with Abad’s latest title, Traiciones de la memoria (Betrayal to Memory): “It’s clear to me that I’ll spend the rest of my life getting into debt with this Colombian writer.”

For more detail, please read the whole article: www.elpais.com

 

 

The Fundação Biblioteca Nacional has announced the launching of the Brazil Literature Translation Grant 2010, which consists of twenty grants ranging from US$ 1.000 to US$  4.000. Applications may be sent from February 10th to March 31st. All works to be submitted must be unpublished in the language they are to be translated into. For more information, please contact us or the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional:

cgll@bn.br or tel.: +55 21 2220-2057

 

 

The generation 00 of Brazilian literature:

 

“Prosa & Verso”, part of the leading magazine Globo, organized an election of the eight best new Brazilian authors of the last decade, starring a selected jury of well-known literary critics and cultural entities.

 

We are glad to announce that our author Santiago Nazarian is among the winners with his novel Feriado de mim mesmo (“Holidays from Myself”), next to authors like Daniel Galera, Bruna Beber, Tatiana Salem Levy, Michel Laub, Marilia Garcia, Ana Maria Gonçalves and Ana Paula Maia.

 

 

We are glad to announce that our agency represents the work by Augusto Boal and Graciliano Ramos, two classics among Brazilian literature.

 

We also shall take care of the work by Sergio Bizzio and Reynaldo Sietecase, both from Argentina, the country which will be the guest of honour at this year’s Frankfurt Bookfair.

 

 

The prestigious Premio Nadal has been awarded to Clara Sánchez for her novel Lo que esconde tu nombre, which will be published in February by Editorial Destino.

 

 

Congratulations! Eduardo Antonio Parra has been awarded the Prix Antonin Artaud for his story collection Sombras detrás de la ventana. The prize includes the publication in France as well as 70.000 Euro.

Parra's book was praised by the jury as an exceptional narrative

masterpiece, creating a world of its own, emphasizing the author’s capacity to give an acute insight into peculiar human situations.

 

 

We are proud to announce that the novel O Destino Turístico (The Tourist Destination) by Rui Zink has been awarded the Prémio Ciranda by Alma Azul. It was handed over on November 13th as part of the Festival da Língua Portuguesa. With this sharp-humored allegory on our little “paradisical territory”, Zink has achieved a remarkable maturity.

 

 

Congratulations to Edgar Hilsenrath! He has been honoured with the Prix Mémorables for his novel Fuck Amerika (Bronsky’s Confession). The prize has been awarded by the Association of Independent Booksellers in France.

 

We are very delighted to announce that our author Moacyr Scliar received the Prêmio Jabuti 2009 for his latest novel Manual da paixão solitária.

This is the fourth time the Prêmio Jabuti, one of the most important literary prizes in Brazil awarded in several categories, goes to Scliar. With his comprehensive œuvre, published in several languages, Scliar has won a place among Latin America’s most important contemporary writers.

 

 

Las viudas de los jueves (Thursday Night Widows), the film based on the best seller by Claudia Piñeiro, was released September 10 in Buenos Aires and counts with a record of espectators! Below please find a link to the trailer which is exciting even if you don’t speak Spanish:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9W3MXRPc7w.

In the UK, the novel was shortlisted on Amazon’s Rising Stars campaign. The promotion aims to highlight books from up-and-coming authors and is limited to eight novels. Click here for more.

 

 

We are proud that Gonçalo M. Tavares was shortlisted for the Prêmio Portugal Telecom 2009 with his novel Aprender a rezar na Era da Técnica. Tavares won this prize, which honours literature in Portuguese language, in 2007 with his novel Jerusalém.

 

 

The International Literature Prize – Haus der Kulturen der Welt will be awarded, for the first time, for contemporary prose fiction in the first German translation. Dos veces junio by Martín Kohan is nominated for the shortlist.  The announcement of the winner will take place in Berlin on September 30th.

 

http://www.hkw.de/en/programm2009/literaturpreis/literaturpreis.php

 

 

Claudia Piñeiro and José Pablo Feinmann are among the authors who shall attend this year’s Frankfurt Bookfair in order to represent Argentina as the Guest of Honour in 2010.

 

The Mexican author Rogelio Guedea was awarded the Silverio Cañadas Prize at the Semana Negra in Gijón for his novel Conducir un tráiler. For more information on the author and his work, please visit

www.mertin-litag.de/authors/Guedea

 

 

Together with other associations, the UNESCO nominated Buenos Aires World Book Capital City 2011, which means a huge acknowledgment of the best programme dedicated to books and reading. Following this nomination the Guest of Honour role of Argentina at the Frankfurt Bookfair 2010, we can be assured that the Argentine literature will be in the center of medial attention during quite a period of time.

We are glad to take the chance to remind you that the Argentine Government approved to support translations of national literature with the sum of 250.000 Euros. Please contact us for further details!

 

 

In it’s 11th edition, the International Cooperation Prize Caja de Granada was awarded to José Saramago and Dario Fo. Since 1998 the prize goes to institutes and personalities dedicating themselves to social justice. The panel considered that both Nobel laureates have always been committed to “the search of peace, development and understanding between nations”.

 

 

As first Portuguese writer, at this year’s Salon du Livre in Paris Lídia Jorge received the Charles Bisset Prize 2008 by the French Psychiatry Association for her novel Combateremos a sombra (“We Shall Fight the Shadows”), which was published in France by Éditions Métailié. Since 1987 the prize is given to works which evoke and respect problems of human nature in an authentic way.

 

 

Very good news from France:

“Jerusalém” by Gonçalo M. Tavares is nominated for the Cévennes Prize 2009, awarded to the best European novel published in France!

The other nine finalists are Manuel Rivas, Hanif Kureishi, Sandro Veronesi, Sasa Stanisic, Jean Echenoz, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Morton Ramsland, Vassili Golovanov and Charles Lewinsky.

 

Las viudas de los Jueves (“Thursday’s Widows”), the bestseller and Clarín-Prize awarded novel by Claudia Piñeiro, with 130. 000 copies and translations in nine countries sold so far, will now be brought to the big screen by the leading Spanish production outfit Tornasol Films. The director is Marcelo Piñeyro.

 

 

We are pleased to annouce that As mulheres do meu pai (“My Father’s Wives”) by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated by Daniel Hahn, has been longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2009 in Great Britain.

 

 

Congratulations! This 18th of February 2009 Luis Sepúlveda was awarded the Primavera de Novela Prize for his new novel

La sombra de lo que fuimos

(“A Shadow of what we were”)

It is one of the most prestigious and valuable awards in Spain (200.000 Euro), granted annually by the publishing house Espasa Calpe and the cultural section of El Corte Inglés, Spain’s largest department store. With Ana María Matute as president, the jury consists of Antonio Soler, Ángel Basanta, Ramón Pernas and Ana Rosa Semprún.

 

 

Excellent news from Argentina: Facing the role of the Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Bookfair 2010, the Argentine Government just approved to support translations of national literature with the sum of 250.000 Euros. The programme is open to all languages, but will emphasize English and German translations. Please contact us for further details!

 

 

We are proud to announce that Insensatez (“Senselessness”) by Horacio Castellanos Moya was shortlisted for

 

 Best Translated Book of 2008 (USA)

 

 

THE FISH CHILD, the latest film by Lucía Puenzo based on her novel of the same name, will be released at the Berlinale Film Festival in February at the Panorama Section, in the presence of Lucía Puenzo and the two main actresses, Mariela Vitale and Inés Efron.

 

Our author José Eduardo Agualusa is invited by the prestigious British Baths Literature Festival in March.

 

 

We are glad to announce that Moacyr Scliar was awarded for his novel O centauro no jardim (“The Centaur in the Garden”) the special prize PRIX MINUIT MOINS UNE by the jury of O PRÊMIO NOCTURNE 2008 in France.

 

 

Richard Zimler has been awarded the Prix Benveniste in France for his novel “Guardian of the Dawn”. A former award winner of this literary prize was for example Antonio Muñoz Molina.

 

In the USA, the National Public Radio (NPR) declares

Insensatez (“Senselessness”) by Horacio Castellanos Moya as one of the Best Foreign Fiction Titles of 2008:

 

Best Foreign Fiction Titles of 2008

 

 

The work by Gonçalo M. Tavares was just presented in France. The press says:

 

Un Kafka portugais. LE FIGARO

 

Gonçalo M. Tavares est une révélation. MAGAZINE LITTÉRAIRE

 

In Italy Gonçalo M. Tavares was awarded the International Trieste Prize for his poetry.

 

Ondjaki has received the Grinzane Cavour Literary Prize for Africa in the category of young writers.

This is the first time that this prestigious prize is given to African writers.

 

 

We are very glad and proud to announce the new novel by José Saramago:

A viagem do elefante. This is not a historic novel, even if based on history. It tells the story of the elephant Solomon, travelling across half of Europe in the XVI Century. The Elephant’s Journey shall be launched in Autumn, in several languages simultaneously. For further information and reading an extract already, you are welcome to visit the blog of the José Saramago Foundation:

http://blog.josesaramago.org

 

Another book we have been waiting for is the volume of short stories by Luis Sepúlveda: La Lámpara de Aladino y otros cuentos para vencer al olvido. Evoking the Patagonia and more magic places, Aladin’s Magic Lamp and other stories to overcome the Oblivion shall be published by Tusquets Editores in Barcelona and in several other languages in September and October.

 

 

We are very proud to announce that the movie Blindness, adapted by Don McKellar from José Saramago’s 1998 Nobel Prize-winning novel, has been selected to open the Cannes Film Festival on May 14th.

 

Directed by “City of God”s Fernando Meirelles, the truly international movie is produced by Niv Fichmann and stars Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.

 

The $25 million epic - about an unnamed city struck by a unique plague in which 90 per cent of the population go blind - is a three-way co-production involving Brazil and Japan as well as Canada.

 

 

Tropa de Elite (The Elite Squad) won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale Film Festival.

A compelling fictional account, The Elite Squad reveals, for the first time and viewed from the inside, the strenous training and dramatic day-to-day life of the men sent to fight at the forefront of the guerrilla warfare against drug lords in Rio’s slums.

The film is based on a best-seller from Brazil, written by prominent anthropologist Luiz Eduardo Soares in collaboration with André Batista and Rodrigo Pimentel – two former members of the Rio de Janeiro’s Special Police Force.

Please contact us for further information.

 

We are glad to announce that The Lady from Buenos Aires by John Lantigua has successfully been presented at the Berlinale Co-Production Market. The mystery novel has been published by arte público in 2007.

 

El olvido que seremos (Forgotten We Shall Be) by Héctor Abad Faciolince leads the Colombian bestseller list of 2007 with 69 points, followed by Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) by Gabriel García Márquez with 31 points.
Renowned contemporary authors have expressed their enthusiasm for El olvido que seremos in the following terms:

 

Not only is it a beautiful and profoundly moving work, not only is it a necessary lesson on current themes such as civic education and the relation between personal and historical memory, but also an irreplaceable testimony of the struggle for democracy and tolerance in countries that are so near and dear to us.

Fernando Savater, El País

 

A tremendous and necessary book, with an overwhelming courage and honesty. At times I wondered how he had the bravery to write it.

Javier Cercas

 

A beautiful, authentic and moving book

Rosa Montero

 

I store up what I have read by Héctor Abad like spherical, polished, luminous little balls of bread, ready for when I have to walk through a vast forest in the nighttime.

Manuel Rivas

 

Mario Vargas Llosa on Las palabras y los muertos by Amir Valle:

The novel is excellent, and I am greatly honoured by your generous dedication. The story is interesting on its own account and it breathes – as do the best socially engaged novels – with a critical vision that is more ethical and cultural than it is political. The book is absorbing, full of suspense and, at times, reveals a humour that breaks the unbearable and oppressive tension.

 

 

During the Guadalajara Bookfair, the Tusquets Prize for novels was awarded to the Mexican author Elmer Mendoza for his latest work Balas de plata (Silver Bullets). The winner receives the sum of 20.000 Euros, and his novel will be published simultaneously in Spain, Argentina and Mexico. Congratulations!

 

 

Congratulations to the Argentine author and director Lucía Puenzo: Her film XXY, already awarded at this year’s Cannes Film Festival the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique, has now been selected as the Argentinian submission for the foreign-language Oscar nomination and the Spanish Goya Awards.

 

 

We are proud to announce that Gonçalo M. Tavares has been awarded the Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa 2007! His novel Jerusalém, which won the José Saramago Prize in 2005, was published by Editorial Caminho in Portugal in 2004 and by Companhia das Letras in Brazil at the end of 2006.

Since it was created five years ago, this is the first time that authors from different countries than Brazil were included in the list of the prize. Among others, Mia Couto from Moçambique, Ondjaki from Angola and Cintia Moscovich from Brazil had been shortlisted.

Tavares as the winner receives 100.000 Reais (about 39.000 Euros).

Congratulations to Lídia Jorge who has received the Grande Prémio SPA/Millennium for her life’s work, particularly for her latest novel Combateremos a sombra. Jorge, one of Portugal’s most important writers, is author of stories and eleven novels, translated into English, French, German, Italian and many other languages. The prize is awarded by the Portuguese Author’s Society and sponsored by Millennium Bank, worth 25.000 Euros.

Congratulations to José Eduardo Agualusa! The Angolan author has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize!

The Prize is awarded annually to the best work of contemporary fiction in translation and aims to restore the prominence of translated fiction on the British scene. Worth £10,000 (€15.000 or $17,500), divided equally between the author and his or her translator, it counts as the most lucrative and wide-ranging translation prize in the world.

Congratulations also to Mia Couto from Mozambique, who has been awarded the Prêmio União Latina de Literaturas Românicas.

This prize was launched in 1990 by the Latin Union, the international organisation founded by the Madrid convention, and celebrates the diverse literary heritage of the romance languages. Each year, the prize is awarded to a novellist working in a romance language whose work deserves to be widely read and translated into the other romance languages. The value of the prize is 12,000 euros.Congratulations to Adriana Lisboa and Santiago Nazarian from Brazil and to Karla Suárez from Cuba!

The World Book Capital and the Hay Festival – the intenational cultural organization which held it’s annual celebration in Bogotá this year – announced the Best Latin American Writers Under 39 years of age. After having been selected by the audience and by the jury members Piedad Bonnet, Oscar Colazos and Héctor Abad, they are considered the most representative Latin American writers and shall be invited to visit Bogotá in August.

 

The XX Semana Negra in Gijón, Spain, celebrates the awards of this year's literary prizes:

 

We are very glad to announce that Alfonso Mateo-Sagasta, is the winner of the Espartaco Prize for the best “historical novel” in Spanish with his title El gabinete de las maravillas (The Cabinet of Marvels).

 

Amir Valle is the winner of the Rodolfo Walsh Prize in the “non fiction police genre”, published in 2006, with his journalistic approach to prostitution in Cuba: Jineteras.