Ischia

Gisela Heffes, Grady Wray

Description

• Campaign highlighting the long-awaited translation of a groundbreaking work of experimental Argentinian literature
• Serialization outreach targeting Granta, Paris Review, Astra Magazine, BOMB, n+1, Electric Literature, Literary Hub
• National review and feature outreach to print publications (NYTBR, New York Times, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, LA Times, Boston Globe) and online (NPR, Literary Hub, Buzzfeed, The Millions)
• Targeted outreach to publications spotlighting translated literature: World Literature Today, Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Latin American Literature Today
• Virtual events featuring author and translator; Promotion at/events pitched to PEN World Voices Festival
• Outreach to university Spanish and Iberian Studies departments at Rice University, University of Oklahoma, Columbia University, and others
• Promotion on the publisher’s website (deepvellum.org), Twitter feed (@deepvellum), and Facebook page (/deepvellum); publisher’s e-newsletter to booksellers, reviewers, librarians

Ischia is a portrait of an unnamed narrator and her friends: wandering through the margins of different cities, especially Buenos Aires, they search for purpose in an increasingly uncertain world.

An intricate, gutsy, and raw novel, Ischia is populated with outsiders who navigate the vicissitudes of life in Argentina and the world. Ischia, the female narrator, is the youngest in a family of seven brothers and relates her experiences as she waits for a ride to the airport. Told through dizzying would-have, could-have conditionals, Ischia overlaps and blurs the past, present, and future of three young characters defined by lack of certainty or expectation. 

These three lives unfold between disenchantment and humor, and the narration transports readers into a world of memories, desires, and dreams. The novel advances lyrically through themes both solemn and lighthearted, shaping the contours of imagined, hilarious, and surreal experiences.

Sujets

• Literary
• Argentina
• Fiction
• Argentine

Informations

• Publié par: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Date de parution: 14 mars 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781646052400
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Ischia
Gisela Heffes
TRANSLATED BY GRADY C. WRAY
DEEP VELLUM PUBLISHING
DALLAS, TEXAS
Deep Vellum Publishing
3000 Commerce St., Dallas,Texas 75226
deepvellum.org · @deepvellum
Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature.
Copyright © 2000 by Gisela Heffes
Translation copyright © 2023 by Grady C. Wray
Originally published as Ischia by Paradiso Ediciones in Buenos Aires in 2000.
First US Edition, 2023
Funding for this project has been provided in part by the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at University of Texas at Dallas, the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and City of Dallas Office of Arts & Culture.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Heffes, Gisela, 1971- author. | Wray, Grady C., translator.
Title: Ischia / Gisela Heffes ; translated by Grady C. Wray.
Other titles: Ischia. English
Description: First US edition. | Dallas, Texas : Deep Vellum Publishing, 2022.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022038665 | ISBN 9781646052141 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781646052400 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PQ7798.418.E35 I8313 2022 | DDC 863/.7--dc23/eng/20220825
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2022038665
ISBN (TPB) 978-1-64605-214-1 | ISBN (Ebook) 978-1-64605-240-0
Cover design by Victoria Peña
Interior layout and typesetting by KGT
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
—Sylvia Plath
Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.
There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.
—Wallace Stevens
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone…
—Robert Frost
I
T HE CITY FILLED WITH TINY, GLIMMERING LIGHTS: IT’S late, I said to myself. In summer, it gets dark around eight thirty. But Lara still isn’t here. No call, no sign of life. Why was she late? I wondered what could’ve happened. I tried to convince myself that it was just some stupid holdup, the bus hadn’t come, the subway had broken down, a protest had blocked the streets and stopped traffic. I was a little afraid. Lara hates when people show up late, and she’s usually the first to arrive. She hates wasting time. What’s more, when we have to travel, she usually takes a couple of hours to pack. Tomás was waiting for us at the airport. The plane was leaving in four hours. I began to imagine things, all sorts of things. My mind was racing a mile a minute, and I couldn’t stop thinking that something bad had happened to Lara. I tried to calm down. For some reason we always dream up tragedies, accidents, or someone’s sorrow. I’m not worried, I repeated silently. Perhaps she’d told me something I didn’t hear when she was leaving and I was brushing my teeth. I tried to remember everything we had said to each other before we said goodbye. I found no hole in the conversation; no word floating alone in space dropped down to explain everything else that was happening. My anxiety was growing, and I didn’t have enough fingers or lungs to handle so many cigarettes. I looked at the wall and questioned the gigantic white mass that enveloped the entire room. I looked at the baseboards, at the papers piled behind the door, at the passport, at the lamps, at the wooden chairs. But neither the wall, nor the baseboards, nor the papers piled behind the door, nor the passport, nor the wooden chairs were in any condition to answer me. I didn’t find a single answer, not one fucking answer in the whole house. I sat on the wooden chair trying to smash the seat with my body, and then I decided to wait until Lara felt like she was good enough to show up. I would wait until I grew tired of waiting. Then I’d grow bored and open some book while from far away I’d hear an uncertain rock band as they rehearsed and made all sorts of mistakes. I’d open the fridge, and it would be empty: only three bottles of beer that had been my only concern when I went to the store and a can of Pringles, Sour Cream & Onion, the ones I liked so much. I’d open one of the bottles and pour the beer into my Winnie-the-Pooh mug that one of my brothers brought me from Disney when he went on his honeymoon with that woman who he says is his wife but to me is a big fat zero. I’d take a long drink of beer and lick my lips with a sigh of great satisfaction because the beer would be really cold and I’d be really thirsty. After drinking and drinking for a while, I’d feel happy or strange. I’d begin to sing really loudly and dance in the middle of the room, because some artificial happiness would overcome me in this sporadic, alcoholic stupor. I’d think about how artificial and ephemeral everything was, definitely, but it wouldn’t matter too much: I’d continue on with my feet in the air and my mind on Mars. When I got the sensation that my feet were screaming at me for a little rest, I’d listen to them with great affection and special care, and I’d lie down on the old unwaxed hardwood floor, with my eyes on the ceiling and my mouth like someone who had died. I’d change the CD because the Beatles would begin to get old, although The White Album is probably one of my favorites, and I’d listen to “Foxy Lady,” “Hey Joe,” and a bit more of that Hendrix Anthology that Lara once bought in a tiny record shop in the Moreno neighborhood because she didn’t have anything to listen to in her portable disk player, or something like that. After that, I’d switch to “Ziggy Stardust” and “Space Oddity” and “China Girl” and “Jean Genie.” That would get old, and I’d change Bowie for the Velvet Underground. After a while I’d get up off the floor, worried about Lara, who was like a sister to me and who would call me desperate from a public phone in Buenos Aires to tell me that the cops had shown up at Tomás’s mother’s and if he called I should tell him to come here, that she was already on her way, that she was going to try to get back the stash she had left at his house, but that if she couldn’t, she’d come right away. Really, she didn’t tell me all that, in that way, on the phone: she halfway told me, and in code, but I deduced the rest thanks to my experience deciphering this special coded language that, really, everyone understands today. But worried as I’d be, I’d run circles around the table, I’d walk to the old Siam refrigerator and with my half-trembling hands grab another bottle of really cold beer that I’d immediately open with a plastic bottle opener that had Carlos Gardel’s face on it. I’d serve myself in my inseparable Winnie-the-Pooh mug that one of my brothers brought me from Disney when he went to that strangest of places with that strangest of women who he said was his wife and who, to me, was nothing but a big fat zero. Then I’d pour that piss-colored liquid into the enormous belly of Winnie-the-Pooh, and I’d notice that the alcohol, in some way, had had an effect on me. As I noticed it, I’d go over to the CD player and change the disk because I was fed up with Santana, and I’d play Miles Davis’s CD or, at best, B. B. King’s: the CD I gave to Lucio, another one of my brothers, for his birthday, knowing ahead of time that he was not going to like it. I bought that CD for myself in an indirect way because this dear brother of mine ran out of time to exchange it, and he ended up giving it to me. Bah, really he said he’d loan it to me, but what’s the difference? For quite some time I’d decided not to return anything that anyone lent me, to steal and not pay for any ticket, book, or pair of panties unless it was essential. Anyway, Lara was taking care of that. But now she wasn’t coming and I’d think that after pressing the little square button on the CD player, where in the center you could read the little letters “play,” I would go to that square attached to the wall that some people would use as a bookshelf but Lara and I used as a dresser, paper catcher, cupboard, chest of drawers, knick-knack cabinet and wine rack, and I’d look for, among that inhospitable heap of objects, an enormous cardboard box where I kept all the pictures. So, little by little, while Miles Davis fine-tuned the sounds that grabbed on to the night, I’d slowly lift the lid of the cardboard box, and I’d be afraid all over again. I would feel that my heart was paralyzed because ever since I was little, nothing had scared me more than memories. So I’d close my eyes and fill my mug with beer. I’d look very seriously at Winnie-the-Pooh’s little eyes, and I’d gulp it all down to boost my courage. But before that, I’d worry a little more about Lara, and also about Tomás. I’d make sure the front door, the only one of course, was closed tightly, and I’d look out the window to the street, just in case there was a patrol car or some suspicious vehicle or some cop camouflaged as a volunteer fireman. Certain that everything was under control, I’d go back to the box, but not without first taking another swig of my beer. I’d be ready to sit down, once again, on the wood floor, when I’d notice that my belly had swollen so much that it would keep me from sitting down. I’d decide to go to the bathroom because if I did anything else my bladder would burst into a thousand pieces. I’d get to the bathroom door and clumsily turn on the light, since the alcohol would suddenly show me that it could have some kind of effect on me, but I would laugh. After finding the light switch, I’d hurt my elbow on the doorlatch, because I wouldn’t be paying much attention, and I’d bump up against it. After rubbing my elbow a little and laughing, I’d think, like my cousin Gonzalo, that hitting my elbow would bring good luck. Then I’d forget, since my bladder would push me to the toilet. First, I’d raise the toilet seat, because if I didn’t it would be a filthy mess, and once the seat was steady and leaning against the wall