ANGÉLICA GORODISCHER
Argentine writer
"We will not die as long as there is a reader who opens our book."
Carlos Fuentes Argentine writer
"We will not die as long as there is a reader who opens our book."
Carlos FuentesWho is Angélica Gorodischer?
From a very young age she moved with her parents to the city of Rosario, where she has lived ever since. Her parents, the merchant Fernando Félix Arcal and the poet Angélica de Arcal, had married in 1924 and had moved from Rosario to Buenos Aires. In 1936 the family returned to Rosario. Surrounded by books, as a child she already wanted to be a writer.
Following her marriage to the architect Sujer Gorodischer in 1948, she chose her surname as a pseudonym, under which she would appear as a literary author. She studied at the Normal School No. 2 of Professors in Rosario and she began to pursue a career at the University of Philosophy and Letters of the National University of the Litoral, which did not finish.
In 1964 she won a contest for the “Vea y Lea” magazine with the detective story “En verano, a la siesta y con Martina”. In 1988 she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship, thanks to which she participated in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. In 1991, also with a Fulbright scholarship, she taught at the University of Northern Colorado.
From 1967 to 2022, she was a jury member of various literary awards in Argentina and other countries. She lectured more than 350 lectures, especially on fantasy literature, on feminine writing and has been translated into English, French, German and is about to be translated into Italian and Greek. She is considered one of the three most important female voices in science fiction in Latin America.
Angélica passed away in her dear Rosario on february 5, 2022.
Books are subject to stock availability of the corresponding publishers.
Spanish – Emecé
Kalpa Imperial gathers eleven stories, eleven fragments of the history of the Empire More Vast than Ever Existed. From the narrator we know that the Empire was destroyed and rebuilt countless times and that its history begins anew with each new dynasty of emperors and empresses.
The scene is always the same: the mountainous north, the jungle south and the capital cities. The stories are multiple and diverse. Like Bib, the scrawny boy who wants to re-found the Empire and invent a new order; that of the last prince of the Oriole dynasty and his strange death; that of the orphan who rises from the underworld to the throne; that of the Fourth Emperor in the Kiautonor dynasty, who orders a city to be built in honor of his lover.
Angélica Gorodischer creates a portentous fictional universe, absolutely her own, where dystopia intersects with realism, the novel with the story, the metaphor about power with the little human drama. Published for the first time in 1983, Kalpa imperial marked a milestone in the work of this great Argentine author and made her an inescapable reference in universal science fiction.
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Spanish – Emecé
Who says a girl has to be fragile?
Who says a girl can’t be cunning?
Who says a girl has to be fragile?
Who says a girl can’t be cunning?
From the one who cannot bear the evil of her mother’s new husband and decides to take action on the matter to the one who refuses to leave school to work in the harvest and manages to twist her fate, Angelica Gorodischer’s girls fight back. They are not allowed. They prove that they can do their bidding and chart their own paths. It is true that they sometimes
see the world through a veil of magic, which the author perfectly recreates, but that does not prevent them from judging the behavior of adults and acting according to their own interests.
These stories by one of the most renowned Argentine authors make their footsteps in childhood, with clear and transparent prose that invites you to dive into a world where logic can be suspended from time to time. If it is true that childhood is the homeland, Gorodischer invites us not to resign ourselves to being exiled and to see the world again with the eyes of a girl.
Spanish – Emecé
There is a woman who procures a weapon, because she must defend herself from the vermin that the flood brought and feed on human flesh. A priest in a small town manages to conceive that the world that men inhabit cannot be the center of the universe. A young nun discovers a cove on the windowsill and, against the wishes of the Mother Superior, waters it, cares for it, makes it her own. The new student, so blonde and modest, arouses envy in the hearts of her classmates, who conspire to crucify her and, without intending to, reach nirvana in that instant.
Playing with the words that give name to each story, Angélica Gorodischer presents a set of stories that cover much more than what is written on its pages. With a prose that flows like water, it drags the reader in a stream that takes him away from the shores and takes him to other places, other times, other destinations.
In Coro, Gorodischer sets in motion a universe of diverse characters, and endows them with a voice that allows a glimpse of the secret folds of his soul, flashes of thoughts, desires and desires that the reader, almost without realizing it, makes their own.
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Spanish – Emecé / Cruz del Sur
“I never thought that everything was written and that my daily fight was useless, no. And not because I was lucid or particularly clever, but simply because I didn’t look beyond the momentary detail: the black habit, the punishment cell, eating today and tomorrow we’ll see, the orange stick. “An older woman tells her life to a writer. Meeting after meeting, placidly, without respecting chronologies or dates, it narrates a journey that begins in a slum and is far from being placid. Féry – or Fermina, or Stéphanie – knew poverty and abandonment. She lived on the street, she was hungry, she was prostituted. She suffered the horror of jail and was in a nunnery. But Féry did not know what awaited her “from the other side of the days.” Because what seemed like a destiny without escape, worse even than prison, mutated, and Féry was able to know love, worldly pleasures, happiness. Egidia Molina participated a lot, the closest thing to a mother she ever had; María Cruz, the nun who taught her to read; Eleanor, an elegant lady, who picked her up from the threshold and protected her … In this new novel made of fragments, each with its own register and style, Angélica Gorodischer displays her
amazing mastery in the art of writing. Palito de naranjo shows how destinies and wills are mysteriously interconnected, and how everything can change in an instant.
Spanish – Emecé / Cruz del Sur
The streets, the parks, the iron gates, the compartment of a train, the shadow of a memory that acquire another dimension when a writer sees them again through the eyes of the girl she was. This is not an autobiography, but there is something of that; nor an intimate diary, although this text also participates in the dialogue with herself, central to every newspaper.
It is, without doubt, the story of a mother who was present, even when she was not there, in her daughter’s life. It is also a glimpse of some decades of the twentieth century traveled by that Creole-French-Aragonese family that, by dint of so many bloods, came to swell the happy miscegenation of the Argentine families. And it is, finally, Angélica Gorodischer’s own story, the one that she has told again and again to herself in dreams, in books, to her children and to her children’s children.
In Historia de mi madre , all the talent, grace and humor that characterize her narrative are displayed. Its pages capture the reader as an accomplice and immerse him in that fascinating world that is the story of a life and, through it, of many, infinite lives, visible or secret, transparent or mysterious.
Books are subject to stock availability of the corresponding publishers.
English - Small Beer Press
Kalpa Imperial is the first of Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer’s many award-winning books to be translated into English. In eleven chapters, Kalpa Imperial’s multiple storytellers relate the story of a fabled nameless empire which has risen and fallen innumerable times. Fairy tales, oral histories and political commentaries are all woven tapestry-style into Kalpa Imperial: beggars become emperors, democracies become dictatorships, and history becomes legends and stories.
But Kalpa Imperial is much more than a simple political allegory or fable. It is also a celebration of the power of storytelling. Gorodischer and acclaimed writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who has translated Kalpa Imperial, are a well-matched, sly and delightful team of magician-storytellers. Rarely have author and translator been such an effortless pairing. Kalpa Imperial is a powerful introduction to the writing of Angélica Gorodischer, a novel which will enthrall readers already familiar with the worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin.
Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin.
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English - Small Beer Press
An enchanting novel of the women whose lives pass through a nineteenth century boarding house. Moving, subtle, and dreamlike.
Prodigies explores the story of the poet Novalis’s birthplace in the German town of Weissenfels after it is converted into a boarding house. Moving, subtle, and full of wit, irony, and dreams, this novel fills the house with the women who lived there throughout the 19th century, and across the flow of history constructs the secret drama of their destinies.
Considered by the author and many others to be her best novel, Prodigies is the third novel we have published by this author in English (after Kalpa Imperial and Trafalgar — although this book is very different from both of those.
Translated by Sue Burke.
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English - Small Beer Press
When you run into Trafalgar Medrano at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club and he tells you about his latest intergalactic sales trip, don’t try to rush him. He likes to stretch things out over seven double coffees. No one knows whether he actually travels to the stars, but he’s the best storyteller around, so why doubt him?
Trafalgar, a novel-in-stories, was originally published in Argentina in 1979. It starts off light and refreshing right from the very first short Who’s Who in Rosario listing for Trafalgar, although there are occasional clouds that pass through Trafalgar Medrano’s bright and happy stories.
Translated by Amalia Gladhart.
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English - Penguin
‘A kind of magical realism for science fiction … Quite, quite brilliant’ Tor
Part pulp adventure, part otherworldly meditation, this is the story of Trafalgar Medrano: intergalactic trader and lover of bitter coffee and black cigarettes. In the bars and cafés of Rosario, Argentina, he recounts tall tales of his space escapades – involving, among other things, time travel and dancing troglodytes.
‘A unique brand of science fiction … unlike anything I’ve ever read’ Los Angeles Review of Books.
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English - Vanderbilt University Press
Jaguars’ Tomb is a novel in three parts, written by three interconnected characters. Part one, “Hidden Variables” by María Celina Igarzábal, is narrated by Bruno Seguer. Seguer in turn is the author of the second part, “Recounting from Zero” (“Contar desde zero”), in which Evelynne Harrington, author of the third, is a central character. Harrington, finally, is the author of “Uncertainty” (“La incertidumbre”), whose protagonist is the dying Igarzábal. Each of the three parts revolves around the octagonal room that is alternately the jaguars’ tomb, the central space of the torture center, and the heart of an abandoned house that hides an adulterous affair.
The novel, by Argentine author Angélica Gorodischer, is both an intriguing puzzle and a meditation on how to write about, or through, violence, injustice, and loss. Among Gorodischer’s many novels, Jaguars’ Tomb most directly addresses the abductions and disappearances that occurred under the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976–83. This is the fourth of Gorodischer’s books translated into English. The first, Kalpa Imperial—translated by Ursula Le Guin—was selected for the New York Times summer reading list in 2003.
Translated by Amalia Gladhart.
Deutsch - Golkonda Verlag
Platz 1 der Phantastik-Bestenliste im Februar 2019
Argentinien ist im Jahr 2010 Ehrengast der Frankfurter Buchmesse. Aus diesem Anlass präsentieren wir einen Sammelband mit Erzählungen einer der ganz großen Stimmen der lateinamerikanischen Phantastik: Angélica Gorodischer ist in ihrer Heimat längst eine lebende Legende. Auf Deutsch war von ihr bisher lediglich der Roman »Eine Vase aus Alabaster« zu haben. Die vorliegende Auswahl soll einen Einblick in das vielgestaltige Werk dieser preisgekrönten Autorin geben.
»Im Schatten des Jaguars« liefert eine Sammlung von Highlights aus dem Schaffen der Autorin: Erkundungen durch postapokalyptische Metropolen aus dem Frühwerk, eine Einsicht in die schnörkellos evasiven Parodien und in die im Caféhaus-Plauderton verfasste »Underdog«-Science Fiction aus den siebziger Jahren; dazu aus den achtziger Jahren Tropen-Komik sowie Sprengstoff aus postnationalen Republiken und alternative Eroberungsfahrten (oder sagen wir: »Die Welt ist ein Dorf«) aus den Neunzigern; weiterhin kabbalistische Mikrotexte und lyrische Rückblenden in die politischen Abgründe Argentiniens, aus dem neuen Jahrtausend. Alles in einem Band.
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Deutsch - Golkonda Verlag
»Kalpa Imperial« – der imperiale Krake. Das Imperium, das immer wieder neu entsteht, wächst, in blutigen Bürgerkriegen wieder zerfällt. Dessen Geschichte ständig neu erzählt wird von den Herrschern, den Geschichtenerzählern, den einfachen Menschen. Das sich wandelt wie das Geschlecht mancher seiner Bürger, die mal unterdrückte sind und dann wieder Rebellen.
Die argentinische Meisterin der Phantastik, Angélica Gorodischer, hält mit ihrem episodenhaften Roman unserer eigenen Welt den Spiegel vor, in der nichts so ist, wie es scheint, und die Wahrheit immer im Auge des Betrachters liegt.
Français - La Volte
Kalpa Impérial paraît juste après la dernière dictature argentine en 1983 pour des raisons de censure : comme de nombreux livres argentins de cette époque, il n’aurait pu être publié en cette période trouble. Sa poésie, son onirisme en font un exemple parfait de la littérature argentine, de son style, de sa force, de son originalité et de sa personnalité.
Au fil d’un récit caustique et ubuesque (souvent on pense à Alfred Jarry), mais aussi fantastique (à la manière des Villes invisibles d’Italo Calvino), ce conte, cette fable, ce roman tissé d’histoires narre les naissances et les chutes d’un empire : « l’Empire le plus vaste qui ait jamais existé ».
Kalpa Impérial (« Empire Infini »), c’est un vertige, une valse macabre qui tourne et tourne et ne trouve de fin que dans le début d’une nouvelle danse. C’est un livre universel au sens premier – universel et visionnaire, contant l’Histoire de notre société sans jamais la nommer.
C’est la folie, l’ignominie, l’absurdité et la beauté du monde. Ne citant aucune des dictatures qui sont pourtant sous nos yeux, il nous parle de la domination de certains pays européens et nord-américains sur le reste du monde, et cependant n’en parle pas. Universel et surtout actuel, puisqu’il évoque les crises migratoires, le despotisme, la famine, la politique, le pouvoir, la liberté… Et parce qu’il traite d’écologie, de ces villes végétales qui commencent tout juste à germer dans nos sociétés modernes. Même s’il n’en est rien, nous avons à sa lecture le sentiment que ce livre est notre contemporain.
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Français - La Volte
Trafalgar Medrano n’est pas n’importe quel commercial. Certes, comme beaucoup de marchands et autres conseillers de vente, il aime parler. Raconter son quotidien professionnel en buvant sept double cafés entrecoupés de temps en temps par une cigarette, quand il ne les fume en parallèle. Car il en a des choses à dire, Trafalgar Medrano. Et pour cause, ses voyages l’entraînent de planète en planète à la rencontre de populations toutes plus originales les unes
que les autres, en des lieux où le vraisemblable n’a plus lieu d’être… Pourtant, tout ce qui sort de la bouche de Trafalgar est vrai, authentique, c’est garanti! Personne ne saurait vérifier si ce qu’il relate tient du réel ou de l’imaginaire…Publié en 1979, Trafalgar est le deuxième roman de l’Argentine Angélica Gorodischer, encore inédit en France. Jouant des tropes de la science-fiction traditionnelle, l’auteure nous présente, tel une figure jumelle de l’écrivain, le personnage de Trafalgar Medrano qui, au cours de neuf histoires, nous déroule le tourbil-lon de ses aventures intergalactiques. Affabulateur de génie ou baroudeur fantasque? Cette Schéhérazade de l’infini et au-delà nous emporte avec humour et mystère au coeur d’un réjouissant et extraordinaire périple parmi les étoiles.
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"They could have forgotten it, he just didn't allow it to be forgotten."
"The heart of a young man has more impetus for life and love and for sickness and hatred."
contacto@angelicagorodischer.com.ar