Creators of The promise And that nighthits the shelves Absolution And In a strange roomtwo stories published by Libros del Asteroid which navigate between fiction and reality and make the hours pass with their reading. With them, the voices of Alice McDermottmultiple Pulitzer Prize finalists, and Damon Galgutwinner of the prestigious Booker Prize, becomes the best literary company of the fall.
“In a Strange Room”
In a strange room tells the life of a lonely young man who travels Greece, East Africa and India. He sets off without knowing clearly what he expects from the trip, but with the conviction that he does not want to return to his country, South Africa. So, he decides to let himself go and follow in the footsteps of the other travelers he meets during his pilgrimage.
With his particular way of telling things, Damon Galgut evolves between fiction and memory, and achieves the impossible: that a seemingly disordered story becomes a author’s story. Galgut even allows himself the luxury of not naming the protagonist, and the truth is that the reader doesn’t miss him either. Thus, he manages to convert In a strange room in a story about the uprooting felt by the young man, who prefers to live, without direction, foreign roomsshared with strangers. Despite this, the main character never becomes a distant personality. In fact, his sensations become those of the reader, who ends up finding himself enveloped in a disturbing story.
The meeting between the South African traveler and the first boy with whom he shares a room, whom he calls The GermanIt’s just a little touch. Even though it’s a heady relationship, the plot of In a strange room It gains in intensity as the pages go on, until the last. Once the book is closed, it is almost impossible to take stock without letting the story rest to assimilate the mixture of emotions it provokes – anger, nostalgia, compassion… -, among which one clearly prevails. particular: the agitation
While letting chance decide his path, the solitary young man take on different rolesfrom that of the follower to that of the caregiver, including the role of lover. All this until we understand that only meeting others allows us to continue to exist, despite the complexity of human relationships.
“He’s just passing through. Perhaps the horror is more easily felt from home. It is both a redemption and a misfortune, he does not carry abstract moral burdens, but for him this absence is symbolized by the succession of innocuous and dingy rooms in which he sleeps, night after night, always different but, ‘in a way, always the same.’
Damon Galgut’s book, recognized as “a master of psychological tension”, has been described by critics as “an astonishing creation with evocative and disturbing writing” (Tutor); a “sharp, beautiful and disturbing” story (The times); “a powerful meditation on the relationship between travel, love, and an erratic self” (Financial Times) or a “superb” book with which the author “innovated and raised his writing to another level” (The observer).
With his previous novel, The promiseDamon Galgut (South Africa, 1963) won the Llibreter Price and the booker’s priceone of the most prestigious English-speaking literary prizes for which he had already been a finalist with The good doctor and also with In a strange room.
From the author of THE PROMESA (Booker and Llibreter prize).
An essential voice in contemporary Anglo-Saxon literature.#startreading pic.twitter.com/qu813bMYaw
– Asteroid Books (@LibrosAsteroide) October 17, 2024
‘Absolution’
The winner of National Book Award and several times Pulitzer Prize finalist returns to Spanish bookstores with Absolutionother bestseller of The New York Times by Alice McDermott.
“You can’t imagine what it was like. For us, I mean. For women, wives (…) We were sure of one thing, looking to the future: we did not want to live the same life as our parents. And then we experienced it.
On this occasion, Alice McDermott approaches a different perspective of the intervention of The United States in Vietnamthat of women, placed on the periphery of war and politics. He does so with his usual delicacy through two characters, Tricia and Charlene. The first is a young woman who works for the US Navy and who has just married a lawyer with a promising career; The second is a housewife, mother of 3 children and as beautiful as she is intimidating.
The two forge a fragile alliance in the Saigon 1963but it is thanks to Charlene’s daughter, who reconnects decades later with Tricia, that the reader learns the story of the time and the lives of these two women in this context: the desire to be a mother of one and the efforts of the other to improve the conditions of orphans in orphanages in the Vietnamese city of Saigon.
McDermott explores in “one of the best books of the year”according to time, Squire, Vogue either Los Angeles Timesmoral obligation and its chains inside and outside the domestic sphere.
Absolution It’s ultimately the life of American expatriates in Vietnam in the early 1960s, against a backdrop of loss of innocence and the United States’ role in the Vietnam War.
The work is “crystalline, meticulous, beautifully conceived and executed,” according to Washington PostTHE McDermott’s “masterpiece”who “has been writing one exquisite novel after another for four decades”, values Squire.
Alice McDermott (New York, 1953) is considered one of the great voices in American literature. Among the most recognized titles of his career, some stand out like that night, At weddings and funerals either A charming man. With the first two works he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and with the last one he won the National Book Award.
A novel that gives voice to those who have been placed
the periphery of war and politics. #absolution #startreading pic.twitter.com/w9EZ7aEoEW– Asteroid Books (@LibrosAsteroide) October 20, 2024
