<p><strong>Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize (Shortlist)</strong></p><p>"A genre-defying collection of associative musings on art, music, philosophy, and literature." <strong>—Publishers Weekly</strong></p><p>"A subtle marvel...a nimble writer who merits wider readership in English." <strong>—Kirkus</strong></p><p>"Innovative, playful, and beautifully executed." <strong>—Carlos Fonseca</strong> , author of AUSTRAL</p><p>"Simply genius." <strong>—Enrique Vila-Matas</strong> , author of DUBLINESQUE</p><p>"A work of wonderful analogies and disparate historical footnotes." <strong>—Morning Star</strong></p><p>"Like Borges before him, Sagasti has produced a rare thing: a work of fiction as learned as it is fun." <strong>—Gary M. Perry, Foyles Charing Cross</strong></p><p>"One hundred pages of pure intelligence, to be enjoyed listening to Sun Ra." <strong>—L’Arbre Vengeur</strong></p><p>"Sagasti produces here a magnificent constellation of stories, and in doing so pays tribute to art." <strong>—Fnac</strong></p>

How do we even begin to narrate the history of the world? Where do we start, and where do we end? Fireflies is Sagasti’s bold and original attempt to answer these questions. Roaming across time and geography, he lights on an eclectic array of characters and events that at first glance seem unrelated, and teases out their stories to reveal unexpected points of contact between them. Stanley Kubrick, Joseph Beuys, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Neil Armstrong, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Beatles, Japanese poets, Brazilian priests, Russian cosmonauts and many more cross these pages, and Sagasti finds common threads that weave them together into a single narrative.The fireflies themselves perhaps provide the key to understanding this book. They become a metaphor for the resistance of certain luminous moments, certain twinkling fragments of history, to the passing of time. They remind us that events do not always simply disappear neatly into the darkness, but rather remain, floating in the air, lighting up the night sky indefinitely. Sagasti shows us that the present moment, like this novel, is a tapestry woven of a multiplicity of times.Using his unique, poetic and keenly observant style, Sagasti transforms the accidents of history into a single, lyrical constellation, and for the reader it is an extraordinary sight.

Les mer

A lyrical and philosophical exploration of seemingly unrelated people and events in modern history, drawing them together to form a whole.

Shortlisted for Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize (UK), a sleeper hit that has resulted in social media posts by band Goldfrapp and hand written letters of thanks from Australia. 


Marketing Plans

  • Social media campaign
  • Galleys available
  • Co-op available
  • Advance reader copies (print and digital)
  • National media campaign
  • Targeted bookseller mailing
  • Simultaneous eBook launch
Les mer

The world is a ball of wool.A skein of yarn you can’t find the end of.When you can’t, you pluck at the surface to bring up a strand and then break it with a sharp tug. Once you find the other end, you can tie the two threads of yarn together again. One of grandma’s little tricks.Some people think the world is a ball of wool from a lamb that sacrificed itself long ago so everyone could stay warm.And they find this idea comforting.And there are others who think that, in fact, the world is held up by threads. As if the ball of yarn were elsewhere. So headlines appear that try to explain things like who pulls the strings of the world . Magazine covers: two threatening eyes against a black background. And there are writers who write whole books about this. Conspiracy theories. An explanation that arises from intellectual laziness: the idea that a shadowy group has chosen to weave the plots of all of our lives. Just like that. Because: a) they are pure and good; b) they want to keep hold of their wealth; c) they are evil, really evil; or d) they hold a secret that would be the end of all of us if we were to find it out – and of them too, of course. For those who see the world this way, any conspiracy – because there have always been conspiracies – is just the visible result of a greater conspiracy. And the smaller conspiracies are all interconnected. Man never reached the moon. Paul McCartney died in 1967 and was replaced by a lookalike. Christ descended from the cross and had twins with Mary Magdalene. Shakespeare’s works were actually written by Francis Bacon. The Lautaro Lodge was a branch of the Freemasons, who are a branch of the Rosicrucians, who are a branch of the Gnostics, and the tree proliferates so wildly that not only does it leave us unable to see the wood but it also fills everything with shadows, making way for those two threatening eyes that want us to understand that there’s something out there it’s better we don’t know about. Because – and this we do know – conspirators always leave clues, as if everything were one big game of hide and seek. For people who think like this, any secret is part of the plot because when people conspire they breathe low and in unison, as if whispering a secret.We shouldn’t believe them, though it’s right to believe in secrets. After all, childhood is nothing but the progressive revelation of well-kept secrets. To reveal them all at the same time would be to reveal nothing. The darkest dark and the whitest light are equally blinding. Like discovering that your dad has already bought all your Santa presents for the next five years.How do we know when there are no more secrets? When do we find that out? Or is there nothing to learn?There are secrets that make the world work in a particular way. But they shouldn’t be called secrets. Omissions would be more prudent. For the machine to keep running, it’s better not to mention certain things. Every family holds a terrible secret that, as soon as we sense what it might be, is no longer mentioned.And there are still others who believe that these threads in fact sustain the world from the inside , as if the world were the great ball of wool and we were insects, like ants or flies, crawling or flying around it. A ball of wool someone is using to knit something. Or perhaps no one is knitting anything at all. There’s just a great shroud with no Penelope, growing without purpose in the eternal silence of infinite space.One thing we can be sure of is that, for hundreds of thousands of years, the ball of yarn has been revolving without pause.

Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781999722746
Publisert
2018-01-15
Utgiver
Charco Press
Høyde
198 mm
Bredde
129 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
89

Forfatter
Oversetter

Biografisk notat

Luis Sagasti , a writer, lecturer and art critic, was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina in 1963. He studied History at the Universidad Nacional del Sur, where he now teaches. From 1995 to 2003 he was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bahía Blanca, authoring numerous art catalogues for exhibitions. As well as Fireflies and A Musical Offering , published by Charco, he has several other novels: El Canon de Leipzig (1999), Los Mares de la luna (2006), Maelstrom (2015), Leyden Ltd. (2019)__ –__ a book composed entirely of footnotes – and most recently Lenguas vivas (2023).

Fionn Petch is a Scottish-born translator working from Spanish, Italian and French into English. He lived in Mexico City for 12 years, where he completed a PhD in Philosophy at the UNAM. His translations of Latin American literature for Charco Press have been widely acclaimed. Fireflies by Luis Sagasti was shortlisted for the Translators’ Association First Translation Award 2018. The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros received an English PEN Award in 2018. A Musical Offering , also by Luis Sagasti, was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 and won the Society of Authors Premio Valle Inclán 2021 for best translation from Spanish. He now lives in Berlin.