Taming The Divine Heron

The second novel in Pitol's Carnival trilogy following The Love Parade continues his daring, genre-melding, picaresque style. From the famous Mexican author, Sergio Pitol, comes his 1988 classic translated by George Henson. Taming the Divine Heron tells the semi-autobiographical story of a novelist working on his newest masterpiece. The protagonist struggles to tell the perfect story—his own imagined protagonists mere imitations of the likes of Lord Jim and Alyosha Karamavoz. To help eradicate writer’s block, Pitol uses his vessel to praise his own favorite authors. Pitol applauds Bakhtin’s world building, Gogol’s “carnivalesque [literary] breath,” and Dante’s dizzying intensity. The character finds a muse in Marietta Karapetiz, whom he aptly dubs Dante C. de la Estrella, and the two debate the literary greats. As the pair attempts to pull from the techniques of the world’s best writers, Pitol creates a love letter to literature from around the globe while simultaneously telling his own magical story. To quote Pitol’s protagonist, “the quality of the story, its effects, its brilliance, its intensity, ma[k]e the most absurd circumstances plausible.” Taming The Divine Heron, second in a trilogy including already-published The Love Parade (Deep Vellum, 2022), houses history, hyperrealism, myth, folklore, and memoir; to read Pitol is to appreciate the power of language.

"Sergio Pitol is not only our best active storyteller, he is also the bravest renovator of our literature."—Álvaro Enrigue in Letras Libres "Pitol is probably one of Mexico's most culturally complex and composite writers. He is certainly the strangest, most unfathomable, and eccentric. . . . [His] voice . . . reverberates beyond the margins of his books."—Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd "Reading him, one has the impression . . . of being before the greatest writer in the Spanish language in our time."—Enrique Vila-Matas The Journey features one of the world's master storytellers at work as he skillfully recounts two weeks of travel around the Soviet Union in 1986. From the first paragraph, Sergio Pitol dislocates the sense of reality, masterfully and playfully blurring the lines between fiction and fact. This adventurous story, based on the author's own travel journals, parades through some of the territories that the author lived in and traveled through (Prague, the Caucasus, Moscow, Leningrad) as he reflects on the impact of Russia's sacred literary pantheon in his life and the power that literature holds over us all. The Journey, the second work in Pitol's remarkable "Trilogy of Memory" (which Deep Vellum is publishing in its entirety), which won him the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2005 and inspired the newest generation of Spanish-language writers, represents the perfect example of one of the world's greatest authors at the peak of his power.

Containing roughly 850 entries about Spanish-language literature throughout the world, this expansive work provides coverage of the varied countries, ethnicities, time periods, literary movements, and genres of these writings. Providing a thorough introduction to Spanish-language literature worldwide and across time is a tall order. However, World Literature in Spanish: An Encyclopedia contains roughly 850 entries on both major and minor authors, themes, genres, and topics of Spanish literature from the Middle Ages to the present day, affording an amazingly comprehensive reference collection in a single work. This encyclopedia describes the growing diversity within national borders, the increasing interdependence among nations, and the myriad impacts of Spanish literature across the globe. All countries that produce literature in Spanish in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and Asia are represented, covering both canonical authors and emerging contemporary writers and trends. Underrepresented writings—such as texts by women writers, queer and Afro-Hispanic texts, children's literature, and works on relevant but less studied topics such as sports and nationalism—also appear. While writings throughout the centuries are covered, those of the 20th and 21st centuries receive special consideration.

From the acclaimed author of The Black Minutes and Don’t Send Flowers, How to Draw a Novel is an ingenious and visually stimulating exploration of narrative and craft from master storyteller and former publisher Martín Solares In this finely wrought collection of essays, Martín Solares examines the novel in all its forms, exploring the conventions of structure, the novel as a house that one must build brick by brick, and the objects and characters that build out the world of the novel in unique and complex ways. With poetic, graceful prose, that reflects the power of fascination with literary fiction, Solares uses line drawings to realize the ebb and flow of the novel, with Moby Dick spiraling across the page while Dracula takes the form of an erratic heartbeat. A novelist, occasional scholar, and former acquiring editor in Mexican publishing, Solares breaks out of the Anglo-American-dominated canon of many craft books, ranging across Latin and South America as well. He considers how writers invent (or discover) their characters, the importance of place (or not) in the novel, and the myriad of forms the novel may take. Solares’ passion for the form is obvious, and his insights into the construction of the novel are as profound as they are accessible. This is a writer’s book, and an important contribution to the study of craft and fiction.

The heartbreaking final volume in Sergio Pitol's groundbreaking memoir-essay-fiction-hybrid Trilogy of Memory, which won him the prestigious Cervantes Prize, finds Pitol boldly and passionately weaving fiction and autobiography together to tell of his life lived through the written word as a way to stave off the advancement of a degenerative neurological condition causing him to lose the use of language.

"One of Mexico's most culturally complex and composite writers." —Publishers Weekly From the renowned Mexican literary master and author of the Trilogy of Memory (Deep Vellum) comes Mephisto's Waltz, bringing together the best short stories from celebrated writer Sergio Pitol's oeuvre. The Xavier Villaurrutia award-winning collection includes the titular story, Pitol's personal favorite. Selected by the author, each story is a glimpse into the works that first gained Pitol his status as one of the greatest living Mexican writers and showcases the evolution of his unique literary style. Sergio Pitol (1933-2018) was one of Mexico's foremost writers and winner of the prestigious 2005 Cervantes Prize. He is the author of the three books in the Trilogy of Memory series: The Art of Flight, The Journey, and The Magician of Vienna, published in English by Deep Vellum. He is renowned for his intellectual career in both the fields of literary creation and translation.

The work of a novelist and translator collide in this visionary and hilarious debut from acclaimed French writer Brice Matthieussent. Revenge of the Translator follows Trad, who is translating a mysterious author’s book, Translator’s Revenge, from English to French. The book opens as a series of footnotes from Trad, as he justifies changes he makes. As the novel progresses, Trad begins to take over the writing, methodically breaking down the work of the original writer and changing the course of the text. The lines between reality and fiction start to blur as Trad’s world overlaps with the characters in Translator’s Revenge, who seem to grow more and more independent of Trad’s increasingly deranged struggle to control the plot. Revenge of the Translator is a brilliant, rule-defying exploration of literature, the act of writing and translating, and the often complicated relationship between authors and their translators.

Trash interweaves the voices of three women with lived connections to the municipal garbage dump of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Aguilar Zéleny's Trash shows the complexities of survival and joy, love and violence for three women: a teenager abandoned by her guardian at the dump, a scientist doing research on the residents of the dump, and a transwoman living nearby who is the matriarch of a group of sex workers. Each one of the characters navigates family, abandonment, power, jealousy, greed, and multiple taboos around sexuality and gender violence. Their stories are linked by geography and by ideas of waste and abandonment. As Aguilar Zéleny explores these territories in her book, she asks crucial questions: Who is seen as disposable and why? How do women find their own means of survival and joy in the midst of a perilous sociopolitical context? What does it mean to live a life in a time of austerity and extreme violence? Trash is a critical intervention in Mexican literature.