Description
Santiago, Chile. The city is covered in ash. Three children of ex-militants are facing a past they can neither remember nor forget. Felipe sees dead bodies on every corner of the city, counting them up in an obsessive quest to square these figures with the official death toll. He is searching for the perfect zero, a life with no remainder. Iquela and Paloma, too, are searching for a way to live on. When the body of Paloma's mother is lost in transit, the three take a hearse and a bottle of pisco up the cordillera for a road trip with a difference.Intense, intelligent, and extraordinarily sensitive to the shape and weight of words, this remarkable debut presents a new way to count the cost of a pain that stretches across generations.
About the Author
Alia Trabucco Zeran was born in Chile in 1983. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and she holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Studies from University College London. La Resta (The Remainder), her debut novel, won the prize for Best Unpublished Literary Work awarded by the Chilean Council for the Arts in 2014, and on publication was chosen by El Pais as one of its top ten debuts of 2015.Sophie Hughes has translated novels by several contemporary Latin American and Spanish authors, including Best Translated Book Award 2017 finalist Laia Jufresa (Umami). Her translations, reviews and essays have been published in the Guardian, the White Review, the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a British Centre for Literary Translation mentorship and residency, a PEN Heim Literary Translation grant, and in 2018 she was shortlisted for an Arts Foundation 25th Anniversary Fellowship.
Reviews
`The Remainder controls a remarkable range of registers (it is, by turns, lyrical, elegiac, sensual, funny, tragic) ... The author of The Remainder, like her characters, is obsessed with words, those `cracks in language' that house our particular ways of understanding things; thanks, among other things, to the meticulous, obsessive attention to detail of her language, this novel is sure to endure.' Edmundo Paz Soldan, author and professor of Latin American literature at Cornell University`A triumphant debut.' Antonio Skarmeta, El Mercurio ---- `The Remainder redefines the political novel ... The voices in The Remainder are some of the most powerful to have come out of Latin America in the last year.' Barbara Perez, `Granta en Espanol, 5 years later',Instrucciones de Uso ---- `A Chilean road trip reveals new ways to think about historical memory.' Alba Lara, Iowa Literaria ---- `A fundamental book about what it means to mourn the past, about the remainders of a history that refuses to be forgotten. This is the debut we all wish we had written. A spirited, brave, urgent book, capable of weaving the political and the poetic.' Carlos Fonseca ---- `One of the best publications of 2015.' Patricia Espinosa, Las Ultimas Noticias ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ---- 'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Striking ... rendered with impressive fluidity.' Katie Da Cunha Lewin,The White Review ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ----'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Sharp and colourful, contrasting well with her characters' furious attempts to come to terms with the past ... The Remainder is well translated, stimulating and grapples skilfully with a complex subject.' Michael Eaude, Literary Review----`Thanatofiction at its best and a debut that leaves the reader wanting more.' Kirkus Reviews
Awards
Winner of Chilean Council for the Arts' Best Unpublished Literary Work Award 2014. Short-listed for Man Booker International 2019 2019.
Book Information
ISBN 9781911508328
Author Alia Trabucco Zeran
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint And Other Stories
Publisher And Other Stories
About the Author
Alia Trabucco Zeran was born in Chile in 1983. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and she holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Studies from University College London. La Resta (The Remainder), her debut novel, won the prize for Best Unpublished Literary Work awarded by the Chilean Council for the Arts in 2014, and on publication was chosen by El Pais as one of its top ten debuts of 2015.Sophie Hughes has translated novels by several contemporary Latin American and Spanish authors, including Best Translated Book Award 2017 finalist Laia Jufresa (Umami). Her translations, reviews and essays have been published in the Guardian, the White Review, the Times Literary Supplement and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a British Centre for Literary Translation mentorship and residency, a PEN Heim Literary Translation grant, and in 2018 she was shortlisted for an Arts Foundation 25th Anniversary Fellowship.
Reviews
`The Remainder controls a remarkable range of registers (it is, by turns, lyrical, elegiac, sensual, funny, tragic) ... The author of The Remainder, like her characters, is obsessed with words, those `cracks in language' that house our particular ways of understanding things; thanks, among other things, to the meticulous, obsessive attention to detail of her language, this novel is sure to endure.' Edmundo Paz Soldan, author and professor of Latin American literature at Cornell University`A triumphant debut.' Antonio Skarmeta, El Mercurio ---- `The Remainder redefines the political novel ... The voices in The Remainder are some of the most powerful to have come out of Latin America in the last year.' Barbara Perez, `Granta en Espanol, 5 years later',Instrucciones de Uso ---- `A Chilean road trip reveals new ways to think about historical memory.' Alba Lara, Iowa Literaria ---- `A fundamental book about what it means to mourn the past, about the remainders of a history that refuses to be forgotten. This is the debut we all wish we had written. A spirited, brave, urgent book, capable of weaving the political and the poetic.' Carlos Fonseca ---- `One of the best publications of 2015.' Patricia Espinosa, Las Ultimas Noticias ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ---- 'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Striking ... rendered with impressive fluidity.' Katie Da Cunha Lewin,The White Review ---- `[a] darkly comic road trip ... [Trabucco-Zeran's] spring-heeled prose moves lightly from lyrical to demotic, bawdy to elegiac.' The Spectator ---- 'intelligent and immersive ... elegaic' TLS ----'In a notable translation by Sophie Hughes, Zeran's lyricism and eye for detail shine on the page ... There is plenty to commend in the book's intentions, and in its elegiac ambitions.' The Irish Times ---- `[The Remainder] tells us ... everything about what it is like to grow up in the shadow of other people's unhappiness.' The Big Issue ---- `Sharp and colourful, contrasting well with her characters' furious attempts to come to terms with the past ... The Remainder is well translated, stimulating and grapples skilfully with a complex subject.' Michael Eaude, Literary Review----`Thanatofiction at its best and a debut that leaves the reader wanting more.' Kirkus Reviews
Awards
Winner of Chilean Council for the Arts' Best Unpublished Literary Work Award 2014. Short-listed for Man Booker International 2019 2019.
Book Information
ISBN 9781911508328
Author Alia Trabucco Zeran
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint And Other Stories
Publisher And Other Stories
