<TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>The Scale of Maps</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>The</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Scale of Maps</TitleWithoutPrefix>

City Lights Books transfers@onixsuite.com 20130919 eng

COM.ONIXSUITE.9780872865105 03 01 City Lights Books 01 GCOI 87286100669880 02 087286510X 03 9780872865105 15 9780872865105 BC <TitleType>01</TitleType> <TitleText>The Scale of Maps</TitleText> <TitlePrefix>The</TitlePrefix> <TitleWithoutPrefix>Scale of Maps</TitleWithoutPrefix> 1 A01 Gopegui, Belén Belén Gopegui Belén Gopegui burst onto the Spanish literary scene in 1993, bowling over critics with her debut, La escala de los mapas [The Scale of Maps], which was hailed as a masterpiece. She has since published six more novels, stories and screenplays. This is her first translation into English. Gopegui was born, and lives in, Madrid. 2 B06 Schafer, Mark Mark Schafer Mark Schafer has translated novels, short stories, essays, and poetry by many Latin American authors including Virgilio Piñera, Gloria Gervitz, Jesús Gardea, Eduardo Galeano, and Antonio José Ponte. Schafer has received numerous grants and awards for his translations, including the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and two Translation Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Schafer's translation, Before Saying Any of the Great Words: Selected Poetry of David Huerta was published in January 2009 by Copper Canyon Press. (For more information on this book and to hear Huerta read his poetry in Spanish go to <a href="http://www.beforesaying.com">http://www.beforesaying.com</a>.) His translation of Belén Gopegui's novel La escala de los mapas (The Scale of Maps) will be published by City Lights in January of 2011. Schafer is also a visual artist who makes provocative collages with maps, which can be viewed on his <a href="http://www.marksonpaper.us">website</a>. 01 eng 176 00 176 03 20 fiction;spanish literature;translation 01 Sergio Prim is a staid and solitary middle-aged man who finds himself suddenly in love. A geographer by trade, but with a broken radar when it comes to navigating human relationships, he is thrown into a psychological crisis by the romantic advances of Brezo Varela, a lively young woman who shares his profession. Haunted by a series of hallucinations in which he's relentlessly pursued by a cynical, vampire-like seductress whose promises of pleasure fill him with horror, Prim attempts to seek refuge by immersing himself in an obsessive metaphysical quest: he determines that he must map the way to a place in which love never results in disillusionment. The Scale of Maps is the story of Prim's struggle to choose between living in the external world that his lover inhabits or continuing to hide in the "hollows" of his inner world; an intimate and mercilessly revealing examination of a meager and fearful life challenged by desire. "A fable of love-laid-waste, an almost scientific story of the anguish of existence, a profoundly and deliberately distorted image of perverse reality, its space and time, a tragedy replete with tenderness and humor." —ABC literario “Gopegui is one of our most outstanding young names [in Spanish literature].” —El País 02 A novel and its protagonist create one another, in a tale strung between the work of Cervantes and Nabokov. 08 "The Scale of Maps is a meditative, obsessive novel, rewarding in the clarity of its expression and the provocation of its questions. As the end of the novel makes clear, it is the posing of those questions--the journey--that is most important." Belletrista 08 "A geographer falls irredeemably in love with a flighty mapmaker in this graceful, peculiar Spanish tale. Sergio Prim, at 39 a self-described 'small man' set in his bachelor ways, has begun an affair with a woman nine years his junior, Brezo Varela, whose vitality and passion for Sergio astonish him and wreak havoc on his orderly life. Being loved so fiercely by Brezo has disoriented him, and the narrative moves between the third and first person, depending on Sergio's increasingly unstable state. His instinct is to slip away and find his 'hollow,' a sanctuary safe from intrusion, 'unencumbered by worry and marked by an intimate and benign invisibility.' He takes off, ostensibly to do research in the mountains of Cuenca, and is haunted by thoughts of Brezo, even seeking the advice of a psychologist, while Brezo, wary of his absence, takes up with a Basque jai alai player. Gopegui's work is beautifully composed and elegantly translated, though Sergio's fundamental elusiveness leaves the reader empty-handed and lovelorn, which, depending on the reader, will be a disappointment or a stroke of brilliance." Publishers Weekly 08 "It's an ambitious novel, to be sure, made beautiful by Gopegui’s liquid prose, and made accessible by her ultimate refusal to answer her own questions." --Janet Potter, Bookslut Bookslut 08 "'Trembling' is how protagonist Sergio Prim first appears to the reader. 'His hands fluttered like a bashful magician's,' the Spaniard Belen Gopegui writes of her fictional creation. Gopegui’s first novel, The Scale of Maps, is a story about a magic trick that Prim never quite masters, an ambitious disappearing act that ends in irredeemable failure. After all, as another character, the enchanting mapmaker Brezo Varela, warns Prim, 'the problem with escape artists is that they never escape.' ". . . Who is this strange man charting a fantastical, solitary course? Gopegui has been compared to Cervantes and Nabokov, and it’s easy to see Prim as a kind of windmill-battling Pnin. Prim’s labyrinthine imaginings could easily place him in a work of Borges as well. ". . . Mark Schafer’s agile translation gives Prim the fitting voice of a polished academic who has lost his bearings. 'The man who examines his own love is like the merchant who sells perishable foods,' Prim suggests inscrutably. Is the reader to understand that Prim’s survival depends on his ability to shill the ripened fruits of his passion before they spoil? And to whom is he selling the harvest of his inspection? It’s just one of many alluring metaphors that quietly collapse upon inspection, evading scrutiny." Words without Borders 08 "Map scales are about relationships. So is "The Scale of Maps," a poignant, provocative, profound and passionate book by respected Spanish writer Belén Gopegui." Kansas City Star 23 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100669880/extras/ScaleofMapsExcerptCL.pdf 04 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100669880/images/87286100669880L.jpg 07 03 72 01 http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100669880/images/87286100669880S.jpg http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100669880 City Lights Publishers 01 City Lights Publishers 20110115 08 16 oz City Lights Books 01 WORLD 20 20110115 01 02 14.95 USD