Acclaimed Latin American novelist and literary scholar Gustavo Faverón Patriau has earned top honors in Europe for the German language edition of his 2019 novel, Vivir Abajo (Candaya), which has been described as a “darkly humorous” voyage across the South American continent.
Set in both the US and Latin America, exploring themes of political violence, revenge, and madness, Vivir Abajo won the award for best literary work translated into German at the Leipzig Book Fair last month. The work was selected from 450 books submitted by 177 publishers from all German-speaking countries.
The German translation of Faverón Patriau's Vivir Abajo is declared winner at Leipzig book fair.
“The past year was very strange,” observes Faverón Patriau, who is professor of Romance languages and literatures at Bowdoin. “Several of my novels were finalists for literary awards—the Finestres Prize in Spain, the Vargas Llosa Biennial also in Spain, the Hot List of the Frankfurt Book Fair Award—and I did not win any of those. I was not expecting to win the biggest of all, the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for books translated into German last year, but that is the one I got, together with my German translator, Manfred Gmeiner.
“My novel—Vivir Abajo in Spanish, Unten Leben in German, To Live Below in English—partially deals with the consequences of mid-twentieth century Nazism in Latin America, so my expectations of how it would be received by the German-speaking critical establishment and the general readership were great and loaded with fear! But it’s been an extremely positive reaction.”
The Book Fair’s Grand Jury writes: “Manfred Gmeiner has rendered this labyrinthine narrative with playful elegance, never losing sight of its idiosyncratic characters, its literary allusions, or the magical sparkle of its poetry. His translation—as fearless as it is gripping—makes reading this book an unforgettable experience."
The jury describes the novel as a “deliberately and cleverly constructed game of deception [taking us] into life ‘down below’—into house cellars, underground prisons, and catacombs… Faverón Patriau weaves a dense web of references where truth and fiction constantly shift.”
Faverón Patriau says he “can’t wait for the reaction of critics toward the forthcoming French and English translations of the novel,” part of which takes place in Brunswick, Maine, and at Bowdoin College! (“That’s another reaction I’m looking forward to,” he adds).
In the coming months, Faverón Patriau will be taking part in book fairs, literary festivals, and invited presentations in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, and other destinations across Europe, as well as Lima, in his native Peru.
Check out some of the media reaction in the German language press to Gustavo Faverón Patriau’s latest success: Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany), Die Standard (Austria).
