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English
Open Letter
15 January 2025
Winner of the 2018 Best Translated Book Award
A dying father in the grip of fever and delirium recounts his youth, hisGrand Tour, the Venetian palaces populated by fascinating and evil figures, his ruin,and his most beautiful journey-the crossing on foot of the frozen Hudson River.

Hisson,still a child,sitsat the foot of the bed, attentively collectingthesefinal,hallucinated words.

Could the work of Herman Melville-masterful author, misunderstood, far too ahead of his time,and considered crazy and dangerous by some critics-haveasits source this ultimate paternal legacy?

Questioning the intricacies of fiction, which constantly oscillatatesbetween reality and imagination, Rodrigo Fresn'sapproaches the enigma of the literary vocation in a new light.

An invented biography, a gothic novel populated by ghosts,and an evocation of a filial love,Melvillcontains all the talent, humor, and immense culture found in the other great works from one of Spanish literature's most ambitious writers.
By:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   Open Letter
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 215mm,  Width: 139mm, 
ISBN:   9781960385161
ISBN 10:   196038516X
Pages:   360
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Rodrigo Fresn is the author of eleven works of fiction, including Kensington Gardens, Mantra, The Invented Part, winner of the 2018 Best Translated Book Award, and its sequels, The Dreamed Part and The Remembered Part, and, most recently, Melvill. A self-professed ""referential maniac,"" his works incorporate many elements from science fiction (Philip K. Dick in particular) alongside pop culture and literary references. According to Jonathan Lethem, ""he's a kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room."" In 2017, he received the Prix Roger Caillois awarded by PEN Club France every year to both a French and a Latin American writer. Will Vanderhydenreceived an MA in Literary Translation Studies from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labb, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Mars, Rafael Snchez Ferlosio, Rodrigo Fresn, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate another of Fresn's novels,The Invented Part.

Reviews for Melvill

"""A kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room.""--Jonathan Lethem ""Rodrigo Fresán is the new star of Latin American literature. . . . There is darkness in him, but it harbors light within it because his prose--aimed at bygone readers--is brilliant.""--Enrique Vila-Matas ""I've read few novels this exciting in recent years. Mantra is the novel I've laughed with the most, the one that has seemed the most virtuosic and at the same time the most disruptive.""--Roberto Bolaño ""Rodrigo Fresán is a marvelous writer, a direct descendant of Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges, but with his own voice and of his own time, with a fertile imagination, daring and gifted with a vision as entertaining as it is profound.""--John Banville ""With pop culture cornered by the forces of screen culture, says Fresán (knowing the risk to his profile of 'pop writer, ' even coming out himself to discuss it), there's nothing left but to be classic. That's the only way to keep on writing.""--Alan Pauls"


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