The Distance Between Us

by Renato Cisneros, Fionn Petch (Translator)

Overview

‘This is an impressive book. In writing it the author demonstrates great talent, as well as great courage.’ —Mario Vargas Llosa

If I succeed in understanding who he was before I was born, perhaps I will be able to understand who I am now that he is dead…In this sprawling family saga stretching across Latin America, a son embarks on a journey to understand his complex relationship with his father and how it shaped the man he is today. Recalling Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits, the renowned journalist and writer Renato Cisneros probes deep into his own family history to try to come to terms with his father, General Luis Federico ‘The Gaucho’ Cisneros, a leading, controversial figure in the oppressive military regime that held power in Peru during the 1970s and 1980s, a tortuous period marked by state-sanctioned terrorism and the rise of the Shining Path.Selling over 35,000 copies in Peru alone, The Distance Between Us is at once excruciating in its honesty and deeply moving in its universal relevance. Selected for a slew of international prizes, it is now available in English for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781999859312
Publisher:	Charco Press
Publication date:	08/06/2020
Pages:	357
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Renato Cisneros (Lima, 1976) is a well-known journalist, broadcaster and writer in Peru, where he presents current affairs programmes on radio and TV. Having published a number of books of poetry and two novels, in 2015 he stepped back from his career as a broadcaster to fully concentrate on his writing. The Distance Between Us has sold over 35,000 copies in Peru alone and has been lauded in the Peruvian and international press. It was shortlisted for the Second Mario Vargas Llosa Biannual Award, longlisted for the Prix Médicis (2017) and was the winner of the Prix Transfuge du Meilleur Roman De Littérature Hispanique (2017). A prequel, Dejarás la tierra is already a bestseller in Spain and Latin America and is to be published by Charco Press. Renato Cisneros lives in Madrid.

Fionn Petch is a Scottish-born translator. He lived in Mexico City for 12 years, where he completed a PhD in Philosophy at the UNAM, and now lives in Berlin. His translations of Latin American literature for Charco Press have been widely acclaimed. Fireflies by Luis Sagasti was shortlisted for the Translators’ Association First Translation Award 2018. The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros received an English PEN Award in 2018. A Musical Offering, also by Luis Sagasti, was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 and won the Society of Authors Premio Valle Inclán 2021 for best translation from Spanish.

Read an Excerpt

I’m not here to tell the story of the woman who had seven children with a priest.All I’ll say for now is that her name was Nicolasa Cisneros and she was my great-great-grand- mother.The priest she fell in love with,Gregorio Cartagena, was a high-ranking bishop in Huánuco, in the Peruvian Sierra, in the years before and after independence. Over the four decades of their relationship, both did what they could to avoid the repercussions of the scandal. Since Gregorio could not or would not acknowledge his offspring legally, he passed himself off as a distant relative, a friend of the family, so he could stay close to them and watch them grow up. Nicolasa reinforced the lie by filling out the baptism certificates with false information.This is how she came to invent a fictitious spouse, Roberto Benjamín, a ghost who played the role of legal husband and father. The day the children found out that Roberto had never existed and that Father Gregorio was their biological father, they resolved to break with their past, with their bastard origin, and made their second, maternal surname the only one, relegating Benjamín to a middle name.Nor will I say anything here about the last of those illegitimate children, Luis Benjamín Cisneros, my great-grandfather. Nothing except the fact that his school friends nicknamed him ‘The Poet’. And that he was such a single-minded character that at the age of seventeen, he decided he was going to win the love of Carolina Colichón, the mistress of President Ramón Castilla. What’s more, he succeeded. By the time he was twenty-one they had three daughters together.The five of them lived hidden away in a squalid room in the middle of Lima, fearing retaliation. Early one morning, at the urging of his mother, who had just discovered the beleaguered life he was leading, Luis Benjamín left Peru and set sail for Paris, where he wrote romantic novels and guilt-ridden letters.Two decades later, he returned to Lima as a diplomat, married a young lady of fourteen, and became a father again, producing five further children.The next-to-last of these, Fernán, was my grandfather.Fernán became a journalist and at the age of twenty-three was hired as an editor atLa Prensa . After just two years he became the editor-in-chief, following the imprisonment of the entire editorial board under the dictatorship of Augusto Leguía. He too suffered harassment from the regime and in 1921 was exiled to Panama, although he ultimately took up residence in Buenos Aires. By then, he already had five children with his wife, Hermelinda Diez Canseco, as well as a new-born baby with his mistress, Esperanza Vizquerra, my grandmother. Both women followed him to Argentina, where Fernán managed to support both families, while avoiding any contact between them.But this novel isn’t about him, either. Or perhaps it is, but that’s not my intention.This novel is about my father, Lieutenant General Luis Federico Cisneros Vizquerra, ‘El Gaucho’ Cisneros, third son of Fernán and Esperanza, born in Buenos Aires on 23 January 1926, died of prostate cancer in Lima on 25 July 1995. It’s a novel about him or someone very like him, written by me or someone very like me. It’s not a biographical novel. Not a historical novel. Not a documentary novel. It’s a novel conscious of the fact that reality occurs only once and that any reproduction made of  it is condemned to adulteration, to distortion, to simulacrum. I have tried and failed several times to embark on this novel. Everything I wrote invariably ended up in the bin. I couldn’t figure out the right texture for the copious material I’d collected over the years.It’s not that I’ve clarified everything by now, but spitting out these first paragraphs anchors me, gives me purchase, provides an unexpected solidity.The doubts haven’t dissolved, but somewhere in the depths I can make out the glimmering granular light of a certainty.All I know for sure is that I’m not going to write a novel about my father’s life, but rather about my father’sdeath: about what that death unleashed and revealed.To do that, I have to go back to April 2006.To what was going on in my life then.

Editorial Reviews

06/29/2020

Peruvian writer Cisneros’s revelatory English-language debut, expertly translated by Petch, is a fictional biography of his late father, Lt. Gen. Luis Federico Cisneros Vizquerra (“El Gaucho”). Born in Buenos Aires in 1926, the Gaucho earned his nickname at the age of 11 and carried it with him to military college. A forbidden romance, however, detoured the Gaucho from a career in the Argentine military to one in the Peruvian. After a coup in 1975, the Gaucho is promoted to minster of the interior, while a scandalous affair with his secretary brings the younger Cisneros into the world. A notorious and bombastic public figure, the Gaucho mingled with Henry Kissinger and Augusto Pinochet while imprisoning and disappearing dissidents. (His outbursts, such as “I don’t imprison people out of malice, but out of firmness,” frequently made headlines.) It is to the author’s credit that he interrogates both his father’s villainy and the villain’s fatherhood. A stern man who boxed ears at academic mishaps was also capable of sharing a beer with his boy. Whether those rare moments are enough for Renato to forgive the Gaucho for his trespasses is what this book seeks to answer. Cisneros’s brave gaze into the abyss of a strongman’s heart is worth a look. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"This is a book to set alongside Philip Roth’s Patrimony, Héctor Abad’s Oblivion, Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude, Martin Amis’s Experience, Albert Camus’ The First Man, and of course Kafka’s Letter to His Father." —Le Figaro Littéraire

"An extraordinary family story... Renato Cisneros delivers here the captivating narrative of a strange and disturbing filiation. A loving and lucid puzzle." —Le Monde

"Cisneros is a phenomenon in Latin America today." —El País

"The Distance Between Us goes far and appeals to the reader exactly because there is so little distance between what is written and what was lived." —Alberto Fuguet, author of BAD VIBES

"Just as a father is never prepared to bury his son, a son is never prepared to dig up his father”(...) It is within this tension that this magnificent novel lies, full of drama and suspense from the very first page." —Edmundo Paz Soldán, author of TURING'S DELIRIUM and NORTE

"The Distance Between Us is the story of a villain told from love. It dwells in the humanity hidden behind the themes left by war. It also narrates that other war: the one which all of us wage against our parents to become the persons we are." —Santiago Roncagliolo, author of RED APRIL

"No one that reads this book will be able to look at their family in the same way again." —Gabriela Wiener, author of SEXOGRAPHIES and NINE MOONS

"This is an impressive book. In writing it the author demonstrates great talent, as well as great courage." —Mario Vargas Llosa, author of THE TIME OF THE HERO and CONVERSATION IN THE CATHEDRAL

"People should read this novel to learn more about themselves." —Jorge Edwards, author of PERSONA NON GRATA

"A book so intelligent and moving, you wish it would never end." —Libération

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Praise for Renato Cisneros

"This thorough account of a powerful family will intrigue fans of Latin American literature." —Publishers Weekly

"An absorbing exploration of one family's clandestine roots and inherited lies. (4 stars)" —The Wee Review

"A relentless search by a writer to discover his family secrets." —Morning Star

"Excellent and thought provoking." —You Shall Leave Your Land

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From the Publisher