The Revolutionaries Try Again

Author:   Mauro Javier Cardenas
Publisher:   Coffee House Press
ISBN:  

9781566894463


Pages:   296
Publication Date:   22 September 2016
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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The Revolutionaries Try Again


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Overview

Extravagant, absurd, and self-aware, The Revolutionaries Try Again plays out against the lost decade of Ecuador's austerity and the stymied idealism of three childhood friends—an expat, a bureaucrat, and a playwright—who are as sure about the evils of dictatorship as they are unsure of everything else, including each other. Everyone thinks they're the chosen ones, Masha wrote on Antonio's manuscript. See About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. Then she quoted from Hope Against Hope by Nadezhda Mandelstam, because she was sure Antonio hadn't read her yet: Can a man really be held accountable for his own actions? His behavior, even his character, is always in the merciless grip of the age, which squeezes out of him the drop of good or evil that it needs from him. In San Francisco, besides the accumulation of wealth, what does the age ask of your so called protagonist? No wonder he never returns to Ecuador. Mauro Javier Cardenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. Excerpts from his first novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again, have appeared in Conjunctions, the Antioch Review, Guernica, Witness, and BOMB. His interviews and essays on/with László Krasznahorkai, Javier Marias, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Juan Villoro, and Antonio Lobo Antunes have appeared in Music & Literature, San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, and the Quarterly Conversation.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mauro Javier Cardenas
Publisher:   Coffee House Press
Imprint:   Coffee House Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 22.80cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9781566894463


ISBN 10:   1566894468
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   22 September 2016
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: ANTONIO & LEOPOLDO I. LEOPOLDO CALLS ANTONIO II. ANTONIO IN SAN FRANCISCO III. LEOPOLDO AND THE OLIGARCHS IV. ANTONIO EDITS HIS BABY CHRIST MEMOIR V. ANTONIO IN GUAYAQUIL VI. ANTONIO'S GRANDMOTHER GIVES ADVICE VII. ANTONIO & LEOPOLDO AT DON ALBAN'S PART TWO: ROLANDO & EVA VIII. ROLANDO & EVA IX. ROLANDO LOOKS FOR EVA PART THREE: DISINTEGRATION X. FACUNDO AT SAN JAVIER XI. LEOPOLDO'S GRANDMOTHER GIVES ADVICE XII. LEOPOLDO & ANTONIO AT JULIO'S PARTY XIII. EVA ALONG VICTOR EMILIO ESTRADA XIV. ROLANDO FINDS EVA PART FOUR: FACUNDO SAYS FAREWELL XV. FACUNDO SAYS FAREWELL XVI. ANTONIO EDITS HIS BABY CHRIST MEMOIR XVII.THE NIGHT BEFORE ALMA'S FIRST VOICE OF WITNESS INTERVIEW

Reviews

An unhinged novel about three childhood friends contemplating a presidential run against the crooked Ecuadorian president Abdala El Loco Bucaram. This is double-black-diamond high modernism, so do some warm-up stretches before you crack this baby. Shelf Awareness


An unhinged novel about three childhood friends contemplating a presidential run against the crooked Ecuadorian president Abdala El Loco Bucaram. This is double-black-diamond high modernism, so do some warm-up stretches before you crack this baby. --Shelf Awareness He's a tremendously skilled storyteller and monologuist; his writing is so exuberant. --Paul Yamazaki In The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas has taken the edifice of arch modernism and suffused it with tender details of a boyhood in Ecuador. The long, unraveling sentences reveal an extraordinarily musical ear. This is a debut that will last. --Karan Mahajan The Revolutionaries Try Again is a daring novel that pits youthful idealism against persistent and inescapable corruption. Mauro Javier Cardenas is an exciting new voice in Latin American literature, and his debut crackles with an exuberance that readers of Valeria Luiselli, Julio Cortazar, and Horacio Castellanos Moya will love. --Stephen Sparks Beware of this writer! The book you're holding bites. If the reader dares enter after this warning, he'll never forget it, and the memory will stay just as sharp as the humor and velocity in the stories themselves. Incisive, forceful, and written in an English that's fiercely subversive, The Revolutionaries Try Again evokes a pair of great Latin American novels: Bolano's The Savage Detectives and Cortazar's Hopscotch. But this book goes even further: it's the novel we've been waiting for, witness to the most recent wave of immigration from Latin America to the US, told through the eyes of a privileged class that forces their conationals out of their countries. It's been ten years since a book this alive, this incandescent, has fallen into my hands. --Carmen Boullosa Irreverent, shape-shifting, and wise, The Revolutionaries Try Again is as relentless in its indictment of political depredation as it is heartfelt in its devotion to the friendships and wild idealisms of youth. This forceful debut novel is a blast of fresh air, and I had a blast reading it. --Justin Taylor, author of Fling What begins as an Ecuadorian political farce in Mauro Javier Cardenas's The Revolutionaries Try Again quickly becomes the most exciting experimental novel in years--a vision so uncompromising in form and sensation that readers will leave sighing, swearing, and returning to page one. --Tony Tulathimutte


Exuberant, cacophonous ... Cardenas dizzyingly leaps from character to character, from street protests to swanky soirees, and from lengthy uninterrupted interior monologues to rapid-fire dialogues and freewheeling satirical radio programs, resulting in extended passages of brilliance. --Publishers Weekly, review *starred* An unhinged novel about three childhood friends contemplating a presidential run against the crooked Ecuadorian president Abdala El Loco Bucaram. This is double-black-diamond high modernism, so do some warm-up stretches before you crack this baby. --Shelf Awareness He's a tremendously skilled storyteller and monologuist; his writing is so exuberant. --Paul Yamazaki In The Revolutionaries Try Again, Mauro Javier Cardenas has taken the edifice of arch modernism and suffused it with tender details of a boyhood in Ecuador. The long, unraveling sentences reveal an extraordinarily musical ear. This is a debut that will last. --Karan Mahajan The Revolutionaries Try Again is a daring novel that pits youthful idealism against persistent and inescapable corruption. Mauro Javier Cardenas is an exciting new voice in Latin American literature, and his debut crackles with an exuberance that readers of Valeria Luiselli, Julio Cortazar, and Horacio Castellanos Moya will love. --Stephen Sparks Beware of this writer! The book you're holding bites. If the reader dares enter after this warning, he'll never forget it, and the memory will stay just as sharp as the humor and velocity in the stories themselves. Incisive, forceful, and written in an English that's fiercely subversive, The Revolutionaries Try Again evokes a pair of great Latin American novels: Bolano's The Savage Detectives and Cortazar's Hopscotch. But this book goes even further: it's the novel we've been waiting for, witness to the most recent wave of immigration from Latin America to the US, told through the eyes of a privileged class that forces their conationals out of their countries. It's been ten years since a book this alive, this incandescent, has fallen into my hands. --Carmen Boullosa Irreverent, shape-shifting, and wise, The Revolutionaries Try Again is as relentless in its indictment of political depredation as it is heartfelt in its devotion to the friendships and wild idealisms of youth. This forceful debut novel is a blast of fresh air, and I had a blast reading it. --Justin Taylor, author of Fling What begins as an Ecuadorian political farce in Mauro Javier Cardenas's The Revolutionaries Try Again quickly becomes the most exciting experimental novel in years--a vision so uncompromising in form and sensation that readers will leave sighing, swearing, and returning to page one. --Tony Tulathimutte


Author Information

Mauro Javier Cardenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. Excerpts from his first novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again, have appeared in Conjunctions, The Antioch Review, Guernica, Witness, and BOMB. His interviews and essays on/with Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Javier Marias, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Juan Villoro, and Antonio Lobo Antunes have appeared in Music & Literature, San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, and The Quarterly Conversation.

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