My Two Worlds - Softcover

Chejfec, Sergio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1934824283 ISBN 13: 9781934824283

Publisher: Open Letter, 2011

Synopsis

Approaching his fiftieth birthday, the narrator in "My Two Worlds" is wandering in an unfamiliar Brazilian city, in search of a park. A walker by inclination and habit, he has decided to explore the city after attending a literary conference--he was invited following the publication of his most recent novel, although, as he has been informed via anonymous e-mail, the novel is not receiving good reviews. Initially thwarted by his inability to transpose the two-dimensional information of the map onto the impassable roads and dead-ends of the three-dimensional city, once he finds the park the narrator begins to see his own thoughts, reflections, and memories mirrored in the landscape of the park and its inhabitants.
 
Chejfec's "My Two Worlds," an extraordinary meditation on experience, writing, and space, is at once descriptively inventive and preternaturally familiar, a novel that challenges the limitations of the genre.

About this title

About the Author

Sergio Chejfec, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and theJohn Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. His books have been translated intoFrench, German, and Portuguese. He teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at New York University. My Two Worlds is his first novel to be translated into English.
 
Margaret Carson is a translator of fiction, poetry and drama from Latin America and Spain.

Reviews

Lean, thoughtful, and keenly observed, the Argentinean Chejfec's first work translated into English packs a great deal of insight into 102 pages. The narrator, an unnamed Argentinean writer, wanders a city in the south of Brazil. He is a great enthusiast of walking, going so far as to claim that it saved him, although from what he's uncertain: "maybe from the danger of not being myself... because to walk is to enact the illusion of autonomy and above all the myth of authenticity." Recently, however, the act has become less meaningful--or perhaps less mysterious--to him. He seeks out a park "too large not to have the air of abandonment which so appeals" to him. He is self-conscious, worried about being ignored, and sure he's being judged; that the judgment of others remains opaque bothers him. Of ultimate concern, finally, is that walking has stopped giving him real insights. The book he's brought with him doesn't interest him nearly as much as boats shaped like swans, the meaning of time, or any number of other observations rendered in fascinating detail. Carson's magnificent translation of Chejfec's latest work should be treated as a significant event.

Edition details

• Publisher: Open Letter
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1934824283
• ISBN 13: 9781934824283
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 103