Two new titles this October from indie powerhouse Dorothy: What Remains by Brais Lamela (in translation by Jacob Rogers) and Denise Rose Hansen’s Blue Sunset.
Here’s Dorothy’s description of What Remains:
Shifting between the present and the archival past, New York City and the remote mountains of Negueira de Muñiz, What Remains follows a young scholar’s journey into a forgotten episode of the Franco regime, uncovering both the tragic history and the still-present afterlife of a forced resettlement project in the Galician countryside of the 1950s.
Like the hybrid works of Valeria Luiselli, Nathalie Léger, and Cristina Rivera Garza, Galician writer Brais Lamela’s prize-winning debut novel blends fiction, memoir, essay, and archival research to set history in conversation with contemporary reality. The result is a work of striking intimacy that explores, with subtle prose and arresting imagery, the complexity of modern migration and the legacy of twentieth-century colonization.
Dorothy compares Hansen’s Blue Sunset to Ann Quin; I’m there:
At a conference somewhere in Europe, Maja meets the Author. Haunted by a recent tragedy, she leaves with him unexpectedly to his home on the Italian coast, where she wanders into the rhythms of his life, observing the world through the lens of his days. Yet everywhere over their new and tender intimacy hangs the knowledge that soon she will have to return home to Copenhagen, site of her devastating loss. With echoes of Virginia Woolf and Ann Quin, Denise Rose Hansen paints with spare, deft lyricism the complicated landscape of grief and yearning that Maja crosses over on her journey toward something new.
Biblioklept 