Klaus Klump: A Man

by Goncalo M. Tavares, Rhett McNeil (Translator)

Overview

"Originally published in Portuguese as Um Homem: Klaus Klump by Editorial Caminho, Lisboa, 2003."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628970340
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	06/05/2014
Series:	Portuguese Literature
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

A. G. Porta was born in Barcelona in 1954. He gained prominence in the Spanish literary world when he won the Ambito Literario de Narrativa Prize in 1984 for a novel written with Roberto Bolano. After a silence of over ten years-which Bolano claimed that Porta spent reading and rereading Joyce-he began publishing novels to widespread critical acclaim.

Editorial Reviews

04/28/2014
This absurdist Portuguese novella is full of non-sequiturs, narrative curlicues, offbeat observations, as well as vivid characters. Klaus Klump is a publisher who loves Johana but one night sleeps with Herthe. When war breaks out, there are atmospheric symbols including tanks and a dead horse. The plot starts to kick in when Klaus is arrested. Meanwhile, Herthe gets married to Ortho, an army officer, but her estranged brother Clako—who performs as a musician at her wedding—threatens to kill the groom. Tavares offers provocative statements such as, "Shoes are very important, because they're the things that keep the intestines intact." He also offers an extended riff on hands and fingertips and Klaus's black lips, to define his protagonist's reason, emotions, rage, physicality, and precision. Tavares's portrait of this man comes together as a mosaic, like the fragments of a news report, not a proper character study. There are also insights and commentaries about destiny, language, peacetime and wartime that culminate in an ironic ending that will prompt readers to question the characters' values and transformations. This is an interesting, albeit challenging work. (May)

Publishers Weekly

His writing is surreal, fun, poetic, profound, dramatic, a discourse of shock, a small bomb that pushes past the usual boundaries, the standard patterns.

Giulia Lancini

Tavares writes simply, starkly, succintly... An impressive work...

Complete Review

Remarkable.

Asymptote

"Gonçalo M. Tavares burst onto the Portuguese literary scene armed with an utterly original imagination that broke through all the traditional imaginative boundaries.... I've predicted that in thirty years' time, if not before, he will win the Nobel Prize." --José Saramago

Dalkey Archive Press

From the Publisher