Literature reaped good fruits this year. October 6, The Swedish Academy announced that French writer Annie Ernaux was the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature for “the courage and clinical sharpness with which he discovers the roots, distances and collective restrictions of personal memory”. Quite an event in French letters, which has not won this award since Patrick Modiano won it in 2014, and also for the publishing market, given that Ernaux was no stranger.
In fact, with annie ernaux there was no editorial novelty in sight. However, for many readers around the globe, the opportunity to approach for the first time a writer who had built an original work around her own life was opened. In RPP News We talked with the writers Karina Pacheco and Victoria Guerrero to offer an approach to the books of the brand new Nobelwhom they described as a “radically honest, original and courageous author”, and as carrying out “almost an ethnography of her life, without sentimentality”.
Both authors recommended titles that should well occupy shelves in personal libraries, such as novels “girl memory”, “The shame” Y “The frozen woman”. Although the books “Pure passion”, “The event” or “The place”, available in our language, are also available for those who still doubt where to enter the Ernaux world.
The hundred years of “Trilce”, “Ulysses” and “The Waste Land”
2022 also meant the centenary of three valuable works in the world of letters. Considered by many the “annus mirabilis” (“year of wonders”), 1922 marked a schism in literature due to the publication of the novel “Ulysses” by the Irishman James Joyceand the poems “the wasteland” Y “trilce“, of English T. S. Eliot and our compatriot Cesar Vallejo. Three titles that opened new paths for creators of the present and that continue to fuel discussions among critics a hundred years after their releases.
Hence, this has also been the year of tributes. In Peru, for example, the literary critic Paolo de Lima published “Nine approaches to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ on the centenary of its publication“, a book that compiles, as its title says, nine essays by students of the Master’s in Creative Writing at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. A joint reading in which Jorge Paredes Laos, Joel Felipe, Judith Paredes Morales, Juan Carlos Gambirazio, Juan Antonio Ascanio, Erick López Sánchez, Daniel Mitma, Edward Medina Frisancho and Oscar Gilbonio Navarro.
Furthermore, in Argentina, Cuenco de Plata publishing house presented a new edition of “the wasteland“, with the translation of the specialist Pablo Ingberg, who also complements the reading of Eliot’s collection of poems with materials and notes on the context that surrounded his appearance.
From “trilce“, the collection of poems with which Cesar Vallejo renewed our language, several editions have been launched this year in which, in addition, the 130th anniversary of the birth of the bard was commemorated. The Alastor publishing house, as part of its ‘Espejo del tiempo’ collection, published in a single volume the two editions that the Peruvian poet launched in 1922 and 1930, one in Peru and the other in Spain. A facsimile reproduction that was accompanied by an introduction and notes by critic Ricardo Silva-Santisteban.
For his part, the critic Victor Vich and criticism Alexandra Hibbett carried out the task of commenting on each of the 77 poems of “trilce” in an edition that came to light thanks to Pesopluma Editores. Due to its disruptive, experimental language, the collection of poems carries the label of indecipherable; but thanks to the contributions of the aforementioned critics, its reading becomes a true discovery. As The back cover points out: “It is not a question, in any case, of proposing a definitive way of reading these poems, but, on the contrary, of motivating new dialogues with and about ‘Trilce'”.
The publishing house Penguin Random House, on the other hand, published a new edition of the “Complete Poetry” of Cesar Vallejo, under its Lumen label, which in recent years has been gathering poems by various representatives of our poetry in volumes that are worth paying attention to. Contrary to other editions, this one includes essays by the critic Luis Fernando Chueca that present each collection of poems and fulfill the role of any self-respecting prologue: spreading the passion for reading the title in question.
Reissues, novels, short stories, poetry and more
The return of FIL Lima to face-to-face led to the release of several publications. The fact that Portugal was the guest country at the event made some Peruvian publishers pay attention to authors from the Lusitanian country. Hence, the Revuelta publishing house brought out a new edition of “The book of restlessness”, the famous book that the poet Fernando Pessoa signed under the heteronym of Bernardo Soareswith a translation by Ana Lucía De Bastos and under the care of the expert in the Portuguese vate, Jerónimo Pizarro.
Pesopluma, for his part, also took the opportunity to publish a “Minimum Anthology” of Pessoa’s poetry, edited by Pizarro himself and translated by Óscar Limache. In tune with this passion for the Portuguese poet, the writer Eric V. Álvarez launched a novel inspired by his multiple heteronyms, entitled “Habitar el unasosiego”. From that country, in addition, the Peisa publishing house brought us into our language the novel by the Portuguese critic Luís Novais, “Los parricidas”.
2022 was also a year of valuable reissues, including the Masterful novel by Lucía Charún-Illescas, “Malambo”rescued by the Seix Barral label, and the essays and newspaper articles that Julio Ramón Ribeyro gathered under the title of “The subtle hunt”edited by Penguin Random House in a version that, according to what he stated to RPP News his biographer Jorge Coaguila, is the definitive one. Another nonfiction classic that returned to our bookstores to make its way among new readers was “The dismemberer of the Hotel Comercio and other police chronicles”, by the journalist Luis Jochamowitz. And it doesn’t hurt to lose sight of “The fallacious prosperity”, a novel by Teresa Ruiz Rosas that Debolsillo recovered after 15 years.
In the novel genre, notable “Closing of edition”, by Juan Carlos Méndez, “30 kilometers at midnight” by Gustavo Rodríguez, “Little bastard” by Richard Parra, “El dolor de la sangre” by Kathy Serrano and “Bond Girls” by Enrique Planas. Qualified as a “micronovela”, it would also fall into this category “Croac” by Ricardo Sumalaviaa rarity -in the best of senses- in our narrative panorama.
Among the collections of short stories that appeared this year in our country, it is worth highlighting Malena Newton Maúrtua’s debut, “A single way of growing up in public”; “Origami Lessons”, by Augusto Effio; and “Anonymous Literature” by Omar Guerrero and “The Darkest Corner of Heaven” by Mayte Mujica. In addition, the narrator Fernando Ampuero published “El primer cuentista”, an illustrated volume that narrates the dawn of fiction under the gaze of a probable ancestor of ours, Jono.
Poetry also had its stellar moment this 2022, thanks to publications such as “A minor wound”, the anthology of poems by Rocío Silva-Santisteban that covers her production from 1983 to 2022; the new collection of poems by Carlos López Degregori, “Variaciones Victoria”; “Gimnasium” of the bard and teacher Jorge Eslava; “Santa Rosa de Lima”, by Roger Santiváñez, among others.
In non-fiction books, on the other hand, the investigation that Dante Trujillo undertook in “A Brief, Strange, and Brutal Story” is not only noteworthy for its literary merits, but also for its topicality in light of recent political events. “Ribeyro, a life”, the biography of the greatest Peruvian storyteller written by Jorge Coaguila, has earned its place thanks to its documentary value. But perhaps the most memorable book of the year was written by the storyteller Guillermo Niño de Guzmán, who after 15 years of silence, returned with “Until you lose your breath”a beautiful book in which, through a blog, he gives an account of his passions: reading, cinema, jazz, among other affections.
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