The Things We Don't Do
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
"Good readers will find something that can be found only in great literature, the kind written by real poets, a literature that dares to venture into the dark with open eyes and that keeps its eyes open no matter what . . . . The literature of the twenty-first century will belong to Neuman and a few of his blood brothers."—Roberto Bolaño
Playful, philosophizing, and gloriously unpredictable, Andrés Neuman's short stories consider love, lechery, history, mortality, family secrets, therapy, Borges, mysterious underwear, translators, and storytelling itself.
Here a relationship turns on a line drawn in the sand; an analyst treats a patient who believes he's the real analyst; a discovery in a secondhand shop takes on a cruel significance; a man decides to go to work naked one day. In these small scenes and brief moments Neuman confounds our expectations with dazzling sleight of hand.
With a variety of forms and styles, Neuman opens up the possibilities for fiction, calling to mind other greats of Latin American letters, such as Cortázar, Bolaño, and Bioy Casares. Intellectually stimulating and told with a voice that is wry, questioning, sometimes mordantly funny, yet always generously humane, The Things We Don't Do confirms Neuman's place as one of the most dynamic authors writing today.
Andrés Neuman was born in Buenos Aires, and grew up and lives in Spain. He was included in Granta's "Young Spanish-language Novelists" issue and is the author of almost twenty works, two of which—Traveler of the Century and Talking to Ourselves— have been translated into English. Traveler of the Century won the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, and was longlisted for the 2013 Best Translated book award, and shortlisted for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the 2014 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Nick Caistoris a prolific British translator and journalist, best known for his translations of Spanish and Portuguese literature. He is a past winner of the Valle-Inclán Prize for translation and is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian.
Lorenza Garcia has lived for extended periods in Spain, France, and Iceland. Since 2007, she has translated over a dozen novels and works of non-fiction from French and Spanish.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Probing the eternal mysteries of identity, self-knowledge, and love, the characters of Neuman's dreamy, metaphysical short stories are just as likely to lose themselves completely in a therapy session as to give birth to themselves, or to discover that the most perfect relationship can be, paradoxically, too perfect to last. In "Mr. President's Hotel," the president of an unspecified nation discovers increasingly threatening messages addressed to him in hotel visitors' books; the narrator of "My False Name," traces "the strange symmetries of history" to find that his ancestors have repeatedly avoided conscription with misunderstandings over the family name. The border between life and death is imaginatively queried in "Bathtub," as a man assiduously prepares to drown himself, and in "A Cigarette," gangsters V zquez and Artigas turn on their ex-crony Rojo, who settles for one last smoke before dying. Disaster is averted in the ruefully hilarious "Outside No Birds Were Singing," when a therapist, taking a call from a suicidal patient, aggravates him into quitting therapy but not life. Ontological questioning and semiotic confusion merge in the collection's brief, brilliant final sections, the "Dodecalogues from a Storyteller," in which Neuman reveals his rule: "To narrate is to seduce: never completely satisfy the reader's curiosity."
