Terrestrial Intelligence Pa

by Epler,Barbara

• ISBN13: 9780811216500
• ISBN10: 0811216500
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-04-17
• Publisher: New Directions

Summary

New Directions, the discoverer of the greatest of the great contemporary world writers--such as W. G. Sebald and Roberto Bolano, Inger Christensen and Bei Dao, Victor Pelevin and Javier Marias--now puts them on display in a showcase anthology. Terrestrial Intelligence gathers the best new ground-breaking fiction from around the world, from W. G. Sebald ("one of the most gripping writers imaginable," The New York Review of Books) and Roberto Bolano ("his generation's premier Latin-American writer, [his] reputation and legend are in meteoric ascent," The New York Times) to the Russian enfant terrible Victor Pelevin and the astonishing Yoko Tawada. Not to be missed are the pleasures of Antonio Tabucchi ("the most original voice in the new generation of Italian writers," The Harvard Book Review), Javier Marias ("Spain's best bait for the Nobel Prize," The New York Sun) and Yoel Hoffmann ("Israel's avant-garde genius," Forward). These are just a few of the two dozen fascinating new writers brought to you in wonderful translations, all on one plate, in Terrestrial Intelligence. Take a trip around the world--Argentina, Brazil, Cape Verde, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Russia, and Spain--and sample the intelligence: we guarantee you will never look at these countries the same way again. New Directions--"long struggling and long astonishing," as Richard Eder put it in The New York Times--is always busy presenting what people in other countries are reading: these are riches which resonate in Terrestrial Intelligence from story to story, like art hanging in an international biennale. These two showcase anthologies are convenient samplers, designed to push the wealth of the New Directions' list as a whole into a more public view. "It would be nice to think," as James Laughlin, founder of New Directions wrote to Ernest Hemingway in 1950, "that virtue met its reward without exterior pushes, but it just ain't so."

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
ROBERTO BOLAÑO
"Last Evenings on Earth"
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
YOKO TAWADA
"Where Europe Begins"
Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky	24	(17)
JAVIER MARIAS
"When I Was Mortal"
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa	41	(12)
W.G. SEBALD
from The Rings of Saturn
Translated from the German by Michael Hulse	53	(24)
CAN XUE
"Snake Island"
Translated from the Chinese by Karen Gernant & Chen Zeping	77	(15)
JOHN KEENE
from Annotations	92	(11)
ALEXANDER KLUGE
"Six Stories"
Translated from the German by Martin Chalmers & Michael Hulse	103	(17)
ANTONIO TABUCCHI
"Letter from Casablanca"
Translated from the Italian by Janice M. Thresher	120	(15)
YOEL HOFFMANN
from The Heart Is Katmandu
Translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole	135	(19)
KONO TAEKO
"Bone Meat"
Translated from the Japanese by Lucy Lower	154	(16)
INGER CHRISTENSEN
from Azorno
Translated from the Danish by Denise Newman	170	(13)
FLEUR JAEGGY
"No Destiny"
Translated from the Italian by Tim Parks	183	(5)
MURIEL SPARK
"The Portobello Road"	188	(24)
FELISBERTO HERNÁNDEZ
"The Crocodile"
Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen	212	(14)
LEONID TSYPKIN
from Summer in Baden-Baden
Translated from the Russian by Roger Keys and Angela Jones	226	(17)
JENNY ERPENBECK
"Hale and Hallowed"
Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky	243	(7)
RODRIGO REY ROSA
from The Good Cripple
Translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen	250	(8)
UWE TIMM
from Morenga
Translated from the German by Breon Mitchell	258	(20)
RENÉ PHILOCTÈTE
from Massacre River
Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale	278	(16)
CLARICE LISPECTOR
"Three Crônicas"
Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero	294	(22)
CÉSAR AIRA
from An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews	316	(17)
VICTOR PELEVIN
"The Life and Adventures of Shed Number XII"
Translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield	333	(12)
LÁSZLÓ KRASZNAHORKAI
from War and War
Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes	345	(23)
DUBRAVKA UGRESIC
from The Museum of Unconditional Surrender
Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth	368	(11)
ENRIQUE VILA-MATAS
from Bartleby & Co.
Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Dunne	379	(16)
Notes on the Contributors	395