Description
By one of Colombia's most acclaimed contemporary novelists, The Storm is an atmospheric, gripping portrait of the tensions that devastate one family. Twins Mario and Jose do not know how to cope with the hatred they feel for their father, an arrogant man whose pride seems to taint everything he touches. Over the course of a fateful fishing trip straight into the heart of a storm, father and sons are confronted with the unspoken secrets and resentments that are destroying them.
About the Author
Tomas Gonzalez was born in 1950 in Medellin, Colombia. He studied Philosophy before becoming a barman in a Bogota nightclub, whose owner published his first novel in 1983. Gonzalez has lived in Miami and New York, where he wrote much of his work while making a living as a translator. After twenty years in the US, he returned to Colombia, where he now lives. His books have been translated into six languages, and his previous novel, The Storm, was published by Archipelago with translator Andrea Rosenberg.
Andrea Rosenberg is a translator from the Spanish and Portuguese and an editor of the Buenos Aires Review. Among her recent and forthcoming full-length translations are Ines Pedrosa's In Your Hands, Aura Xilonen's The Gringo Champion, Juan Gomez Barcena's The Sky over Lima, and David Jimenez's Children of the Monsoon.
Reviews
"There is humor in the frequent revelation of self-delusions. There is also suspense as the storm-more interpersonal than weather-related-builds and breaks. Fabulist elements, lyrical prose, and a chorus of narrative voices give this slim novel depth and breadth." - Kirkus Reviews
"Self-delusion, hallucinations, anger, volatility chafe against the soothing waters and the stars above, and Gonzalez, one of South America's most acclaimed and pitch-perfect novelists, plunges you into the brutality of man and nature alike." - Kerri Arsenault, Lit Hub
"In Andrea Rosenberg's translation, the author's stylistic traits-short and pointed phrases, poetic descriptions and poetic monologues-shine and linger in the reader's ear...The Storm arrives as a welcome addition to the international recognition of one Colombia's most prolific and poetic writers." - Nicolas Llano, Asymptote Journal
"A complex psychological portrait of a family on the verge of self-made disaster." --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, in Shelf Awareness
Praise for In the Beginning was the Sea (Pushkin Press, 2014):
* "Gonzalez poetically and comically captures the inevitable destruction of those who live in a world of fantasy and hubris, depicting beauty and despair by turns." -- Publishers Weekly
* In the Beginning Was the Sea [is] a book that simultaneously works as a political parable, a novel, and a mournful confessional... written in a fashion meant to hold up his own grief and disorientation as its own strange flower, an emotional germination meant both to stand on its own and be inseparable from all that surrounds it, an individual "you," straining to emerge from a ceaseless body of discovery, loss, memory, and their insatiable repetition." -- Los Angeles Review of Books
* "The lyrical, haunting story has the feel of a fable--a young man and his beautiful wife abandon their hectic, intellectual, night-clubbing life in the city to buy a farm on an undeveloped stretch of coast--while the spare, disquieting prose suggests the start of an art-house horror film." - Daniel Levine, Words Without Borders
Book Information
ISBN 9781939810021
Author Tomas Gonzalez
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint Archipelago Books
Publisher Archipelago Books
About the Author
Tomas Gonzalez was born in 1950 in Medellin, Colombia. He studied Philosophy before becoming a barman in a Bogota nightclub, whose owner published his first novel in 1983. Gonzalez has lived in Miami and New York, where he wrote much of his work while making a living as a translator. After twenty years in the US, he returned to Colombia, where he now lives. His books have been translated into six languages, and his previous novel, The Storm, was published by Archipelago with translator Andrea Rosenberg.
Andrea Rosenberg is a translator from the Spanish and Portuguese and an editor of the Buenos Aires Review. Among her recent and forthcoming full-length translations are Ines Pedrosa's In Your Hands, Aura Xilonen's The Gringo Champion, Juan Gomez Barcena's The Sky over Lima, and David Jimenez's Children of the Monsoon.
Reviews
"There is humor in the frequent revelation of self-delusions. There is also suspense as the storm-more interpersonal than weather-related-builds and breaks. Fabulist elements, lyrical prose, and a chorus of narrative voices give this slim novel depth and breadth." - Kirkus Reviews
"Self-delusion, hallucinations, anger, volatility chafe against the soothing waters and the stars above, and Gonzalez, one of South America's most acclaimed and pitch-perfect novelists, plunges you into the brutality of man and nature alike." - Kerri Arsenault, Lit Hub
"In Andrea Rosenberg's translation, the author's stylistic traits-short and pointed phrases, poetic descriptions and poetic monologues-shine and linger in the reader's ear...The Storm arrives as a welcome addition to the international recognition of one Colombia's most prolific and poetic writers." - Nicolas Llano, Asymptote Journal
"A complex psychological portrait of a family on the verge of self-made disaster." --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, in Shelf Awareness
Praise for In the Beginning was the Sea (Pushkin Press, 2014):
* "Gonzalez poetically and comically captures the inevitable destruction of those who live in a world of fantasy and hubris, depicting beauty and despair by turns." -- Publishers Weekly
* In the Beginning Was the Sea [is] a book that simultaneously works as a political parable, a novel, and a mournful confessional... written in a fashion meant to hold up his own grief and disorientation as its own strange flower, an emotional germination meant both to stand on its own and be inseparable from all that surrounds it, an individual "you," straining to emerge from a ceaseless body of discovery, loss, memory, and their insatiable repetition." -- Los Angeles Review of Books
* "The lyrical, haunting story has the feel of a fable--a young man and his beautiful wife abandon their hectic, intellectual, night-clubbing life in the city to buy a farm on an undeveloped stretch of coast--while the spare, disquieting prose suggests the start of an art-house horror film." - Daniel Levine, Words Without Borders
Book Information
ISBN 9781939810021
Author Tomas Gonzalez
Format Paperback
Page Count 120
Imprint Archipelago Books
Publisher Archipelago Books
