Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare

by Salman Rushdie (Introduction), Daniel Hahn (Editor), Margarita Valencia (Editor)

Overview

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
are of imagination all compact."
- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes, And Other Stories and Hay Festival have selected twelve contemporary international authors to each write an original and previously unpublished story as their tribute to these giants of world literature.

In order to celebrate the international influence of both writers and offer us new and intriguing perspectives on them, six English-speaking authors have taken inspiration from Cervantes and his work, while six Spanish-language authors have written stories inspired by Shakespeare.

The authors are Ben Okri, Deborah Levy, Kamila Shamsie, Yuri Herrera, Marcos Giralt Torrente, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Vicente Molina Foix, Soledad Puértolas, Hisham Matar, Nell Leyshon, Rhidian Brook and Valeria Luiselli. An introduction by Salman Rushdie explores the liberating legacy of Cervantes and Shakespeare for contemporary fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908276780
Publisher:	And Other Stories Publishing
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	968,145
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Daniel Hahn is an award-winning writer, editor and translator, with forty-something books to his name. Recent titles include the new Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature and a translation of A General Theory of Oblivion (by Angolan novelist José Eduardo Agualusa). He is on the board of a number of organisations that work with literature, reading and free speech, and is currently chair of the Society of Authors.

Margarita Valencia (Bogotá, 1958) has devoted most of her professional life to books, as editor, teacher, literary critic, translator. Her publishing projects have included the Bogotá publishing house Carlos Valencia Editores, literary collections edited for Grupo Editorial Norma, and Libro al viento, a publishing project aimed at closing the gap between the reader and the book. She has been a staff writer for several magazines (El Malpensante, Cambio, Arcadia, Guión), and the newspaper La Prensa, and her texts have been published in various anthologies. She conceived and directs the program in Book Studies in the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, and co-directs Los libros, a program that airs on National Public Radio.

Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1993 Midnight’s Children was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers", the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

June 19, 1947

Place of Birth:

Bombay, Maharashtra, India

Education:

M.A. in History, King's College, University of Cambridge

Table of Contents

Introduction Salman Rushdie 7

Don Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading Ben Okri 13

Mir Asiam of Kolachi Kamila Shamsie 35

The Dogs of War Juan Gabriel Vásquez Anne McLean 49

Coriolanus Yuri Herrera Lisa Dillman 65

Glass Nell Leyshon 77

Opening Windows Marcos Giralt Torrente Samantha Schnee 95

The Piano Bar Hisham Matar 115

The Secret Life of Shakespeareans Soledad Puértolas Rosalind Harvey 139

Egyptian Puppet Vicente Molina Foix Frank Wynne 159

The Glass Woman Deborah Levy 177

The Anthology Massacre Rhidian Brook 193

Shakespeare, New Mexico Valeria Luiselli Christina MacSweeney 209

Note from the Editors 235

About the Contributors 239

Editorial Reviews

02/22/2016
This diverse collection presents a dozen stories, half of which are translations. In his concise introduction, Salman Rushdie links Cervantes and Shakespeare for believing that literature need not conform to a category; rather, “it can be many things at the same time.” These stories range far and wide, even in their connections to the two authors, though all of them are of high quality. Ben Okri’s “Don Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading” places Cervantes’s hero at the center of a playful meta fantasy about his impact in literature. In Hisham Matar’s “The Piano Bar,” Cervantes pops up as an inspiration for the narrator late in the story. And Deborah Levy’s taut and compelling “The Glass Woman” seems to have no direct connection to either writer, though Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex figures prominently. Shakespeare gets the most conventional homage in Yuri Herrera’s “Coriolanus,” which transfers the titular Roman hero into a more modern governmental-corporate setting. The cheeky “Shakespeare, New Mexico” by Valeria Luiselli, about the small Southwest Reenactment Company, which dramatizes the exploits of Billy the Kid and his ilk, closes the book. This is a notable collection, with a welcome international focus. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"A splendid homage to two visionaries."
—Boyd Tonkin

"Some of the brightest lights in contemporary fiction celebrate the timelessness of Shakespeare and Cervantes . . . these stories [are] fresh and exciting. Much of this comes from the diversity of writer backgrounds on show, and their style and traditions add a wealth of interpretation and perspective."
—Graeme Smith, Herald Scotland

"These stories range far and wide . . . a notable collection, with a welcome international focus."
—Publishers Weekly

"These amazing new stories are not only a tribute to Cervantes and Shakespeare from some of the best contemporary authors writing in English and Spanish, they are also a tribute to the power of translation."
—Cristina Fuentes La Roche, Director, Hay Festival Americas

From the Publisher