The Triumphant Voyage book award finalist

ALIFORM PUBLISHING
www.aliformgroup.com aliformgroup@gmail.com

Aliform Publishing is pleased to announce that The Triumphant Voyage, by Colombian novelist Eduardo García Aguilar and translated from the Spanish by Jay Miskowiec, has been named a finalist in the translation category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Awards. The winner will be announced at Book Expo America in New York on May 25. The Triumphant Voyage was the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia.

The Triumphant Voyage relates the adventures of the fictional poet Arnaldo Farilla Utrillo as he journeys around the world during the first half of the twentieth century, coming in contact with many of the great writers and artists of the age. As the esteemed translator Gregory Rabassa writes, “The best way to get into literature is to live it. This is precisely what Eduardo García Aguilar lets us do with this peripatetic novel, so much in the spirit of Cortázar, Bolaño and Eça de Queirós, as he leads us through the ways and means of what we have come to call modernism.”

Miskowiec is the translation editor of Aliform Publishing, which specializes in Latin American and world literature. His other translations of García Aguilar include the collection of short stories Luminous Cities, the critical examination of globalism Mexico Madness: Manifesto for a Disenchanted Generation, and the novel Boulevard of Heroes, with an introduction by Gregory Rabassa.

Yankee Invasion (Scarletta Press, 2009), by Mexican author Ignacio Solares and translated by Timothy G. Compton, was edited by Miskowiec and is also a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s translation award this year.

EL VIAJE TRIUNFAL DE GARCÍA AGUILAR FINALISTA EN PREMIO A MEJOR
TRADUCCIÓN EXTRANJERA DE FICCIÓN EN USA
La novella The Triumphant Voyage/ El viaje triunfal del colombiano Eduardo García Aguilar quedó entre las seis obras finalistas que optan al premio a la major traducción extranjera de ficción en Estados Unidos en 2010 de la revista ForeWord, cuyos premios (Book of the Year Awards) se entregarán en la Book Expo America de Nueva York el próximo 25 de mayo. La obra de García Aguilar, que relata de forma picaresca la vuelta al mundo de un viajero colombiano en la primera mitad del siglo XX hasta el inicio de La Violencia en su país, fue traducida por Jay Miskowiec,
quien obtuvo en 2008 el I Premio Nacional de Traducción Literaria del Ministerio de Cultura de Colombia y fue publicada en 2009 por la editorial Aliform.
Los ganadores en esta y otras categorías de los Book of the Year Awards serán escogidos por un jurado nacional de bibliotecarios y libreros estadounidenses y los premios se anunciarán en un acto especial en la BookExpo America en Nueva York, el próximo 25 de mayo. Los Book of the Year Awards de la revista Foreword son otorgados para destacar libros notables de editores independientes de Estados Unidos
en varios géneros y contribuir a su difusión y publicidad.
García Aguilar, quien reside en París, nació el 7 de septiembre de 1953 en Manizales (Colombia) y ha publicado las novelas Tierra de Leones, Bulevar de los Héroes, El Viaje Triunfal y Tequila Coxis, el
libro de relatos Urbes Luminosas, los poemarios Llanto de la Espada y Animal sin tiempo y el ensayo Delirio de San Cristobal. Manifiesto Para una Generación Desencantada, en su mayoría publicados en México y traducidos al inglés y publicados por Aliform. La primera novela de Garcia Aguilar traducida al inglés por Jay Miskowiec fue Boulevard of Heroes, publicada por Latin American Literary Review Press, con prólogo de Gregory Rabassa.

a few shots of culture

Café Tacuba's "Unplugged" playing on this warm Oaxaca morning in the Sierra Juárez. Mexico has a tremendous cultural heritage, music and performance and literature and painting all parts of people's everyday lives. One of the jewels of the nation is the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM), located in Mexico City (in fact it is its own "ciudad universitaria"). An ongoing project UNAM is developing is Descarga Cultura (http://www.descargacultura.unam.mx/), a website that offers access to lectures, conferences, music, theater performances, etc., from classic to contemporary works. Especially interesting are authors reading from their own works, like Elena Poniatowska, Monica Lavin, Eduardo Lago, among many others. The site has links to radio stations and programs, the arts and culture magazine Revista de la Universidad de Mexico, as well as a variety of physical and social sciences pages. Check out Descarga Cultura and you'll understand how UNAM was awarded this year the prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize in Communications and Humanities.

Book lovers in Oaxaca, please visit Amate Books, a wonderful independent bookstore downtown on Alcalá. It has a great selection of Latin American literature in English, lots of books on regional and national art, architecture, and cuisine, and many unique titles. Owner Henry Wangeman frequently hosts readings and discussions and was kind enough to let me talk about literary translation a couple weeks ago to a full house (though I imagine most people came for the free mezcal). Amate also has some very cool folk art and handicrafts for sale. There are some kites designed, and signed!, by Francisco Toledo hanging from the walls that are themselves worth the visit.

Recommended reading:
Ficciones de la revolución mexicana, by Ignacio Solares (Mexico City: Alfaguara, 2009).
What would have happened to the nation if some of the great events in Mexico's revolution had turned out differently? Ignacio Solares, author of La invasion (Yankee Invasion, Scarletta Press and Aliform Publishing, 2009), puts figures like Madero, Carranza, Zapata and Huerta in stories that depart startlingly from the official versions. These kinds of parallel universes (Pancho Villa conquers a town in the US, for example) put the heroes and villians of the Mexican Revolution into some new and unexpected lights.

This Sunday, 15 de noviembre, in Oaxaca at the Auditorio Guelagetza, Los Discipulos are going to open for Café Tacuba. Sorry, my beautiful niece Blanqui, who keeps me apprised of culture going around about town, doesn't know what time.

Event with Ignacio Solares

This past week I spent a few days in the great city of Chicago and participated in an event at Loyola University co-sponsored by its Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Consul General of Mexico, that presented Aliform Publishing's newest title, co-published with Scarletta Press, Yankee Invasion. This novel by Mexican author Ignacio Solares recounts the US invasion of Mexico and Mexico City in 1847--highly recommended for those interested in understanding how past history has led to contemporary US/Mexican relations. The next time anyone complains about illegal immigrants from Mexico, remember they didn't cross the border--the border crossed them.

See more about Yankee Invasion at
http://www.aliformgroup.com/
http://www.scarlettapress.com/