Overview

"lvaro Mutis is celebrated internationally as the author of the seven novellas, written between 1986 and 1993, that constitute the legendary and widely loved Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. Maqroll, the Gaviero, or watchman, is a wanderer on the face of the earth, always in pursuit of love and fortune, even as he knows that neither can or will last. Few know, however, that Maqroll made his first appearance, and established his myth, not in prose but in poetry. Starting 1948, Mutis published several volumes of poetry influenced by surrealists like Robert Desnos and Pablo Neruda, but with an unmistakable voice of his own, gaining the admiration of Octavio Paz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who called him ""one of the greatest writers of our time."" Here a selection of Mutis's haunting poems-invocations to a hidden god, private talismans of an outcast spirit-has been rendered into English by Chris Andrews, Edith Grossman, and Alastair Reid. lvaro Mutis's fantastical, gripping, unnerving tales of the exploits and adventures of Maqroll, the Gaviero, or watchman, an inveterate wanderer both on land and sea, are among the most beloved works of twentieth-century Latin American fiction. Like the stories of Borges, like the novels of Mutis's great friend Garcia Marquez, they conjure a strange world of their own which also holds up a mirror, disquieting and revelatory, to the everyday world we imagine we know. If Maqroll eventually found his way into prose, he began his career in poetry, and it was as a poet that Mutis first made his name as a writer. This selection of Mutis's haunting verse, with its evocations, now lush, now stark, of the landscapes of South America, with its prayers to an unknown god, is the first to be published in English. Rendered by Chris Andrews, Edith Grossman, and Alastair Reid, masters of the art of translation, these resonant poems offer a dazzling new entry into the imagination of one of the most original and memorable writers of modern times."

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9781590178744

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"""Portentous dreamer, irredeemable traveler, subtle monarchist and conversationalist extraordinaire, Álvaro Mutis is the inhabitant of an unique, self-sufficient cosmos—endless, without timetables and borders.” —Ilan Stavans"

Author Information

Colombia-born lvaro Mutis (1923-2013) was an author of poetry, short stories, and novels. He received many literary awards, including the 1989 Prix Medicis and the 2002 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. NYRB Classics publishes his complete Maqroll series in The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll. Chris Andrews is a translator of Spanish and French literature. He has translated nine books by Roberto Bolano, including By Night in Chile and Distant Star, and ten books (and counting) by Cesar Aira, including The Musical Brain and Ghosts, and titles by many other authors. He has won the Valle-Inclan Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize for his translations. He lives in Australia. Edith Grossman (1936-2023) was an award-winning translator of poetry and prose by contemporary Spanish-language writers, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. In 2006 she was awarded the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation. Alastair Reid (1926-2014) was a poet, translator, and traveler. He published more than forty books, including two books for children, Ounce Dice Trice and Supposing. . . , both available from The New York Review Children's Collection.

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