The Regal Lemon Tree by Juan Jose Saer (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Regal Lemon Tree by Juan Jose Saer, Sergio Waisman A haunting novel of grief from one of Argentinas greatest modernist writers. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description AN ARGENTINE CLASSIC: Saer is considered by many to be one of the greatest stylists of the twentieth century. (Alain Robbe-Grillet credited him with helping create the New Novel movement in France.) A recent focus on mid-century Latin American authors (Juan Carlos Onetti, Silvina Ocampo), the time is right to rediscover this modernist master.EXPLORATION OF GRIEF: Despite its intricate plotting and imagery, The Regal Lemon Tree is a novel focused on the difficulty of overcoming a great loss, a universal, always timely topic. Author Biography Juan Jos Saer was the leading Argentinian writer of the post-Borges generation. The author of numerous novels and short-story collections (including Scars and La Grande), Saer was awarded Spains prestigious Nadal Prize in 1987 for The Event. Six of his novels are available from Open Letter Books.Sergio Waisman has translated sever books of Latin American literature, including The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia, for which he received an NEA Translation Fellowship Award in 2000. His first novel, Leaving, was published in the U.S. in 2004 and in 2010 as Irse in Argentina. His latest translations are Target in the Night by Piglia, The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela, and An Anthology of Spanish-American Modernismo. Review "A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place."--The Nation "Juan José Saer must be added to the list of the best South American writers."--Le Monde "To say that Juan José Saer is the best Argentinian writer of today is to undervalue his work. It would be better to say that Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language."--Ricardo Piglia "The most striking element of Saers writing is his prose, at once dynamic and poetic. . . . It is brilliant."--Harvard Review "Brilliant. . . . Saers The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wildness of human experience in all its variety."--New York Times "What Saer presents marvelously is the experience of reality, and the characters attempts to write their own narratives within its excess."--Bookforum Long Description *AN ARGENTINE CLASSIC: Saer is considered by many to be one of the greatest stylists of the twentieth century. (Alain Robbe-Grillet credited him with helping create the New Novel movement in France.) A recent focus on mid-century Latin American authors (Juan Carlos Onetti, Silvina Ocampo), the time is right to rediscover this modernist master. *EXPLORATION OF GRIEF: Despite its intricate plotting and imagery, The Regal Lemon Tree is a novel focused on the difficulty of overcoming a great loss, a universal, always timely topic. Review Quote "A cerebral explorer of the problems of narrative in the wake of Joyce and Woolf, of Borges, of Rulfo and Arlt, Saer is also a stunning poet of place."-- The Nation "Juan Jos Excerpt from Book DAWN BREAKS AND HIS EYES ARE ALREADY OPEN He doesnt seem to hear the barking of the dogs, or the long, piercing crowing of the roosters, or the singing of the birds gathered on the Chinaberry tree out front, sounding endless and rich; nor does he seem to hear the dogs, El Negro and El Chiquito, pacing restlessly back and forth out in the yard, wagging their tails, excited by dawn, responding to the distant and intermittent, sharp and isolated barks of other dogs on the other side of the river. The crowing of the roosters comes from multiple directions. His eyes open, lying on his back, his hands folded loosely across his gut, Wenceslao doesnt hear anything but the dark turmoil of the dream retreating from his mind like a black cloud gliding across the sky, revealing the bright circle of the moon. He doesnt hear anything because after thirty years of hearing the sounds of the roosters and the dogs and the birds and the horses at the break of dawn, he is unable to hear now, in the present, anything but silence. As he bends his right leg and rests the bottom of his foot on the bed, the sheet rises and drags the edge down, uncovering a bit of his shirtless chest and of her shoulder. Lying face down next to him, also awake, but with her eyes closed. She moans, almost inaudibly. As soon as he opens his eyes, Wenceslao knows she is awake--apparently, for those thirty years, she has always awoken a fraction of a second before him--although she does not say anything, or move, or make any sound at all. She sighs later, when he sits up and gets out of bed. But while he is lying down, moving an arm or a leg, starting to wake up, she either pretends to be asleep, or wants to believe she is still asleep. Perhaps she believes that she is in fact still asleep, and that she has not woken up yet, and that she will not wake up until he gets out of bed. The springs of the old iron and bronze bed creak, and the iron slots where the springs connect to the backrest squeak when he bends his leg. At this point, only the largest objects are visible in the small house: the dresser and its oval mirror, tall and frail, and the large chest next to the bed, against the adobe wall, just below the small, wooden window full of vertical cracks through which the first gray light of dawn enters the room. The rest fades into a gray semi-darkness, denser and darker toward the corners and above, in the ridge of the pitched, straw roof. It is there, in that darkness, where Wenceslao looks every morning at daybreak when he opens his eyes: the darkness from outside confirming that the darkness inside has retreated, and that he is in fact awake. Wenceslao lifts the sheet and gets out of bed. His loose-fitting, white underwear, which comes down to his knees, is held up by his slightly distended gut, just below his navel. Wenceslao dresses quickly. Meanwhile, still in bed, she sighs, snorts softly, and moves, pretending not to have just woken up, but to have been about to do so, as if she did not also know that for thirty years she has been waking up every morning at the break of dawn, a fraction of a second before him. The light sneaking through the vertical cracks in the small window is no longer gray, but has brightened into glinting sunlight. Wenceslao puts on his shirt--a dull, faded shirt that has lost all color--and then his pants: he lifts his left leg first, and then the right, in a playful balancing act, which for a moment forces him to jump forward on one leg, when the trouser sleeve gets stuck for a second on the heel of his other foot. He walks into his sandals, and keeps walking until he is on the other side of the simple, cretonne curtain that separates the bedroom from the adjoining room--constituting, along with the bedroom, the entirety of the small house. They refer to this part of the house as the "dining room," although they never eat there, but out in the yard if it is hot, or in the little hut built next to the house, which they call "the kitchen." The two rooms inside are divided by a thin, adobe partition, which does not reach all the way up to the straw roof, but separates three quarters of the space. There is nothing beyond the edge of the partition except for the curtain, which sways behind Wenceslao as he crosses into the dining room in his sandals. Reddish, glinting sunlight sneaks through the vertical and right-angled crevices in the cracks of the wooden door that leads out to the yard, as uneven as those in the small window in the bedroom. In the dining room there is a vast rectangular table and four wooden chairs, yellow with wicker seats. Wenceslao coughs, opens the door by lifting the wooden latch, and goes out to the yard, shutting the door behind him. As if emerging from the great reddish splash of the eastern horizon, El Negro and El Chiquito circle around Wenceslao, wagging their tails, without barking. El Negro is so tall that Wenceslao does not need to lean down to pat his back: in addition to his height, also impressive is his black, smooth, glossy fur, and his black, bulging eyes, beaming as his pink tongue hangs long and jittery to one side of his open snout, reavealing his thick, pink gums and white teeth. Wenceslao repeats "Good morning" two or three times--he says "goodish morningish," as if he were talking to a child, using a tone that corresponds to inferior minds, demonstrating that inferior minds have the superiority required to reduce superior minds to their level--and moves forward. El Chiquito cuts him off repeatedly, wagging his tail, trying to jump and lick his face. "Okay, okay, get out of here," Wenceslao says, feigning an angry voice, mixed with a short laugh. Finally, he crouches down in the middle of the front yard and pets El Chiquitos back while the dog stands still, his legs wide and his head raised, looking straight at him. Wenceslao pets El Chiquitos white fur, speckled with black patches, some of which are small, while others are larger, including the one that cover the dogs head and blends into its black snout. It looks as if someone had thrown a bucketful of tar on the dog, a bucketful which for the most part only managed to splash parts of it. El Negro has put his front paws on one of Wenceslaos thighs, and is also looking at him. Wenceslao stays still for a moment, sitting back on his heels, as if held there by the black eyes of one dog and the golden eyes of the other, one hand resting motionless on El Chiquitos spotted fur, the other on El Negros head. He is facing the sun, the top semicircle of which has risen entirely above the horizon, staining the sky around it red. There is no wind. In the middle of the front yard, the Chinaberry tree is full of jumping, singing birds. It casts no shade as of yet, but at its very top a few leaves are haloed by a golden radiance, as if the light sprouted from there instead of the sun. One unexpected ray of light, which also looks as if it were sprouting from the tree itself instead of from the sun, glimmers in the middle of the foliage. Soon the tree will cast a large stretch of shade, suddenly shading the table resting against its trunk. The shade will decrease gradually until noon, disappear for a moment, and reappear at once on the opposite side of the table, stretching slowly and gradually away until the sun fades, leaving nothing but shade behind. For Wenceslao and for her, it is, in effect, like this: "the table" is where they eat lunch and dinner from October to March, unless it is raining or the wind is blowing from the North. At those times they eat at "the small table," beside the house, in the room they call the kitchen. They call the wooden table surrounded by the yellow chairs "the other table." They have never eaten there, except when he died, and they did so because it was sprinkling, and a lot of people stayed to eat, and they would not all have fit in the kitchen or around the "small table." Description for Sales People *AN ARGENTINE CLASSIC: Saer is considered by many to be one of the greatest stylists of the twentieth century. (Alain Robbe-Grillet credited him with helping create the New Novel movement in France.) A recent focus on mid-century Latin American authors (Juan Carlos Onetti, Silvina Ocampo), the time is right to rediscover this modernist master. *EXPLORATION OF GRIEF: Despite its intricate plotting and imagery, The Regal Lemon Tree is a novel focused on the difficulty of overcoming a great loss, a universal, always timely topic. Details ISBN1948830272 Publisher Open Letter Language English ISBN-10 1948830272 ISBN-13 9781948830270 Format Paperback Translator Sergio Waisman Pages 237 Author Sergio Waisman UK Release Date 2021-02-25 Imprint Open Letter Place of Publication Rochester, NY Country of Publication United States NZ Release Date 2021-02-25 DEWEY 863.64 Audience General AU Release Date 2021-01-03 Year 2021 Publication Date 2021-02-25 US Release Date 2021-02-25 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:131332749;

Price: 46.63 AUD

Location: Melbourne

End Time: 2024-12-08T02:48:47.000Z

Shipping Cost: 0 AUD