The Good Cripple - Softcover

Rey Rosa, Rodrigo; Allen, Esther

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811215660 ISBN 13: 9780811215664

Publisher: New Directions, 2004

Synopsis

This muscular, starkly impressive novel from Guatemala's premiere young writer fiercely addresses the seemingly endless violence of Latin America.

A young man, Juan Luis Luna, is kidnapped in Guatemala City and held at the bottom of a rusty, empty underground fuel tank in an abandoned gas station. The kidnappers demand a ransom; his rich father does not reply. The kidnappers threaten to cut off his son's foot and still hear nothing. They then slice off one of Juan Luis's toes and send it to his father, who still refuses to act. So the next day... The Good Cripple obsessively focused, chilling, allegorical is stunningly explosive. With its enigmatic beginning, however, and its circular relentless structure, the novel is also dense with ideas: can one be whole after mutilation? Can the injured transcend violence? Rodrigo Rey Rosa's style is of a lithe pristine clarity, but beneath that calm surface cruelty, revenge, and diffidence churn darkly away. The Good Cripple is an astonishingly intense book, and as unforgettable as the sight of "the place where the foot had been severed, where a circle of red flesh, now a little black along the edges, could be seen, with a concentric circle of white bone that was both milky and glassy..."

About this title

About the Author

Rodrigo Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala in 1958. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin American as well as North Africa. Out of all of his works, there have only been four that have appeared in the English language. In the early 1980s, Rey Rosa went to Morocco and became a literary protege of American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, who later became on of Rey Rosa’s English translators. When Bowles died in 1999, Rey Rosa became an executor of his literature works.  He currently lives in Guatemala City.

Esther Allen has translated Javier Marias, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernandez, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Marti. She is currently a professor at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant (1989), a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (1995), and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (2006).

Review

“A writer of unprecedented originality, of an exigency that removes him from any common standing. Essential and necessary.”
- Vanguardia

“Audacious, magical...a marvel of poetic efficiency and power. Rey Rosa deftly collapses the frontier that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, language and silence, civilization and barbarism.”
- The San Francisco Chronicle

“A sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line...his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.”
- The Times Literary Supplement (London)

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0811215660
• ISBN 13: 9780811215664
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144