Book Presentation: Earthly Days – A Novel by José Revueltas (02.19.21)
Join translator Matthew Gleeson, publisher Pedro Jiménez, and writer Pedro Ángel Palou in celebrating the publication of the first ever English translation of Los días terrenales (Mexico, 1949), a novel by José Revueltas.
Mexican author Revueltas was a lifelong militant whose political activities stretched from the 1930s Communist Party to the 1968 student movement—and sent him to prison several times. His important writing career included prize-winning novels that lay bare the underbelly of Mexican society, as well as screenplays for noir films during Mexican cinema’s Golden Age. But most of his dark and complex work still remains neglected in English.
Earthly Days, originally published in 1949, is a quintessential Revueltas novel that marries Communist struggle, noir narrative, and psychological depth exploration. It also turned out to be his most controversial: it was withdrawn from circulation when Mexican Marxist circles attacked it as politically heretical, and this is its first appearance in English.
The conversation will be moderated by David H. Colmenares, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Colonial Latin American Studies at Boston University.
About the Participants
Matthew Gleeson is a writer and translator based in Mexico. With Audrey Harris, he co-translated The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (New Directions, 2018). With Giada Diano, he co-edited Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1960-2010 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Norton/Liveright, 2015).
Pedro Jimenez is an editor, translator and essayist. He has translated Etel Adnan’s Seasons into Spanish—to be published in Mexico by Archive48 in 2019. He has written various articles and art reviews in English and Spanish for digital outlets and print journals. He is the founder of Archive48, a bilingual publishing project based in San Francisco.
Pedro Ángel Palou is the author of over forty books, including Amores (Jorge Ibargüengoitia Prize), With Death in his Fists (xavier villaurrutia award), In the Bedroom of a World, Paradise Clausurado, Badly Wounded, The House of Magnolia, and historical novels dedicated to Zapata, Morelos, and Cuauhtemoc. He currently teaches at Tufts University.
Register in advance for this meeting: https://bostonu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkde2rqz0oHta_KM8gKY4F1NDhyHXxaTlm
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