'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,

are of imagination all compact.'

- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, And Other Stories and Hay Festival have selected twelve contemporary international authors to each write an original and previously unpublished story as their tribute to these giants of world literature.

In order to celebrate the international influence of both writers and offer us new and intriguing perspectives on them, six English-speaking authors have taken inspiration from Cervantes and his work, while six Spanish-language authors have written stories inspired by Shakespeare.

The authors are Ben Okri, Deborah Levy, Kamila Shamsie, Yuri Herrera, Marcos Giralt Torrente, Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Vicente Molina Foix, Soledad Puertolas, Hisham Matar, Nell Leyshon, Rhidian Brook and Valeria Luiselli. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the liberating legacy of Cervantes and Shakespeare for contemporary fiction.

Twelve contemporary stories inspired by Shakespeare and Cervantes, to mark the 400th anniversaries of their deaths. A Hay Festival 2016 anthology introduced by Salman Rushdie.

About the Author
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with some sixty-something books to his name. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, and he has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others. Yuri Herrera's first novel to appear in English, Signs Preceding the End of the World, won the Best Translated Book Award and was chosen by The Guardian as one of 'The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century'. His second novel The Transmigration of Bodies was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and his sci-fi inflected collection of stories Ten Planets was a finalist for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize. He teaches at Tulane University, New Orleans. Margarita Valencia (Bogota, 1958) has devoted most of her professional life to books, as editor, teacher, literary critic, translator. Her publishing projects have included the Bogota publishing house Carlos Valencia Editores, literary collections edited for Grupo Editorial Norma, and Libro al viento, a publishing project aimed at closing the gap between the reader and the book. She has been a staff writer for several magazines (El Malpensante, Cambio, Arcadia, Guion), and the newspaper La Prensa, and her texts have been published in various anthologies. She conceived and directs the program in Book Studies in the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, and co-directs Los libros, a program that airs on National Public Radio. Deborah Levy is a British playwright, novelist and poet. Her novels include the Booker-shortlisted Swimming Home (2011) and Hot Milk (2016), and the Booker-longlisted The Man Who Saw Everything (2019). Deborah is also the author of a collection of short stories, Black Vodka (2013), and a trilogy of prize-winning Living Autobiographies: Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living, and Real Estate. Rosalind Harvey was born in Bristol in 1982. Her translation of Juan Pablo Villalobos's novel Down the Rabbit Hole was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. She runs regular translation-related public events in the UK and is a founding member and chair of the Emerging Translators Network, an advice and support network for early-career literary translators. Lisa Dillman teaches in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She has translated a number of Spanish and Latin American writers. Some of her recent translations include Rain Over Madrid; August, October; and Death of a Horse, by Andres Barba, and Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera. Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Reviews

'These amazing new stories are not only a tribute to Cervantes and Shakespeare from some of the best contemporary authors writing in English and Spanish, they are also a tribute to the power of translation.' Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Director, Hay Festival Americas

-- Cristina Fuentes Roche

'A splendid homage to two visionaries'

-- Boyd Tonkin

'Some of the brightest lights in contemporary fiction celebrate the timelessness of Shakespeare and Cervantes . . . these stories [are] fresh and exciting. Much of this comes from the diversity of writer backgrounds on show, and their style and traditions add a wealth of interpretation and perspective.'

-- Graeme Smith * Herald Scotland *

'These stories range far and wide . . . a notable collection, with a welcome international focus.'

* Publishers Weekly *



Book Information
ISBN 9781908276780
Author Ed. Daniel Hahn
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint And Other Stories
Publisher And Other Stories
Weight(grams) 280g