Welcome to the March edition of the BTZ Substack. In this edition we take a closer look at some of the major books coming out soon and why you should read them.
We start with Garden of Seven Twilights by By Miquel de Palol Translated by Adrian Nathan West. It is out from March 21 from Dalkey Archive. This is the blurb ;During an atomic alarm in Barcelona in the year 2025, the thirty-year old hero takes refuge in a luxurious mansion in the mountains where he is put up, along with other guests, awaiting the outcome of the conflict. For the following seven days the residents of the mansion spend their spare time reading and taking walks , and, above all, telling stories to each other. The narrators (most of whom belong to the generation thirty years older than the hero's) are eight in number, and the stories they tell can be taken as autonomous ones, although, as the novel advances, it may soon be that when juxtaposed, they do indeed weave a web of intrigue about a family of bankers—a web that gradually involves some of the guests in the mansion.
It is Palol’s debut novel and it came out in 1989 and it is structured in an almost Russian doll style narrative. We get a hint to the structure of the book in the editors note at the beginning and we are provided with a map of the stories within stories taking place in the book;
The book is 888 pages and it is the first of his books to be translated into English. The descriptions of his other work sounds amazing here is the blurb on Boötes:
Boötes is a monumental allegory about the fate of humanity, a ruthless metaphor about the cruelty of power and injustices in our society. This is the long-awaited novel that concludes the publication of "Ejercicios sobre el punto de vista," the most important narrative cycle in Miquel de Palol's work.
We find ourselves inside the Archicenotaph, a labyrinthine, fortified, and highly bureaucratic city-building informally known as the "Island of the Dead." Artur has been summoned to carry out a task of great importance and confidentiality. He will be the final piece that forms the Egrégor, a fraternity of seven participants who will share an uncertain and complex mission. Together they will discover the inner workings of that rocambolesque, mechanized, and putrefied city. If they were to assault the towers, they would have to decide which side they want to be on, but it wouldn't be the most important decision they would have to make.
A novel that stands out for its formal play, narrative voice, and language, which subverts the conventions of the genre to expose the conventions of society. An ironic and intelligent writing that brings together the best of Palol.
If you need more convincing head over to The Untranslated and read what Andrei has to say.
Next we move onto Man-Eating Typewriter by Richard Milward available through White Rabbit from the 16th of March. They are also reissuing three of his previous books at the same time.
Here is the blurb: Set at the fag-end of the 1960s and framed as a novel within a novel published by a seedy London purveyor of pulp fiction, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is a homage to the avant-garde counterculture of the 20th century. Told in Polari, it is the story of an anarchist named Raymond Novak and his plan to commit a ‘fantabulosa crime’ in 276 days that will revolt the world. A surrealistic odyssey that stretches from occupied Paris to the cruise-liner SS Unmentionable to lawless Tangier before settling in Swinging London, the book casts Novak as an agitator and freedom fighter – but, as his memoirs become more and more threatening, his publishers find themselves far more involved in his violent personality cult than they ever intended.
Constructed like a hallucinogenic cocktail of A Clockwork Orange, Pale Fire and Jean Genet’s jailbird fantasies, MAN-EATING TYPEWRITER is an act of seductive sedition by a writer with unfathomable literary talent and boldness. Wild, transgressive, erotic and resolutely uncompromising, this marks the return of a writer who is out there on an island of his own making; a book that will be talked about, celebrated and puzzled over for decades.
David Keenan recommended this book to me (this is usually enough for me) and I read it in a crappy watermarked pdf but I just loved this book. The central character is one of the most unreliable narrators in modern fiction, the writing in Polari is just brilliant and don’t worry, you will be using these words in your daily life in no time. The footnotes in the book from the publisher are also completely unreliable and they become more and more the narrative’s driving force as the book goes on. This book has a great climax, it is surreal and it is very funny.
Another book I want to mention is The Salt Line by Israeli author, Youval Shimoni available on March 30 from Crowsnest Books here is the blurb : In 1904, a wounded Russian Jew turns up in northern India on the run from his pursuers and his own conscience. He doesn’t miss anyone – neither his parents nor the pregnant girl he has deserted; his people or his revolutionary comrades. He is cared for by an English doctor who is obsessed with the man who stole his wife from him in Rome, and has devised a scheme to lure his rival, an archeologist, to the region and take revenge on him.
From this dual structure founded on the betrayal of colleagues and family members, two separate plots emerge. In one, we see acts of terrorism against the Tsar and his ministers, and the horrors of pogroms in early 20th century Russia; in the other, a caravan goes into the desert on a private journey of revenge that is both mad and carefully planned.
A hundred years later when the Russian’s grandson comes from Israel in order to investigate his grandfather’s disappearance, it is not only the family connection that motivates him. Slowly, he approaches the misdeeds his grandfather had been implicated in. But the revelations go further and also touch his own life. What seemed at first to be a story about distant exotic events finally brings the present time and conditions into sharp focus
The Salt Line is a wide-ranging novel that spans several continents, generations, and wars, wherein single moments of decisiveness and hesitation determine the course of future lifetimes and repeat within them, a cycle from which there is no telling whether escape is possible. The characters – Russians, Britons, Israelis and Indians – range from those who believe in an ideal or a god, to those who are entirely faithless; the action ranges from St. Petersburg to a remote district capital in the Indian Himalayas, and from snowy mountains to arid dunes.
This book has everything. It is 800 odd pages, really beautifully translated by Michael Sharp and a great plot shifting across a century, across continents and perspectives.
In other books coming out in March:
Michael Cisco has a new book coming on the 21st from Clash - Pest. This sounds great - Pest presents the bizarre events that lead a new, parallel life for a man named Chalo as a wild yak living in the Himalayas -
Bariloche by one of my favourite novelists Andrés Neuman is out on the 21st from Open Letter listen to this week’s episode and get the book. It is his first novel and is a great starting point for his fiction.
Diary of a Malayali Madman by N. Prabhakaran
Translated by Kalathil Jayasree this is out from Deep Vellum
Catherine Lacey has Biography of X coming out from Farrar, Straus and Giroux and it sounds great.
That is all for now. If you have book news or other things you would like to contribute to the newsletter or the podcast please get in touch via email on beyondthezeropod@gmail.com or via social media.
All the best,
Ben