Additional information
by Perla Suez (Author), Rhonda Dahl Buchanan (Translator)
As a trilogy, the novellas offer a powerful resistance against the socio-cultural invisibility of the Jewish immigrant populations, as well as a significant contribution to the literature of marginalization and exile.
Suez's minimalist narratives have profound traces in the other side of the tapestry of what, in the end, is still very much a powerful and significant presence of Jews in Argentina. Indeed, Suez's three novellas are exercises in reading those backside traces. They are, in the best feminist tradition, stories told from women's point of view in the attempt to bring forth the way in which social history, so often forged consciously and unthinkingly by men oblivious to women's participation in it, impacts on women's consciousness.
Author Biography
Perla Suez was born in Córdoba, Argentina. She began her literary career publishing novels and short stories for children, and was the founding director of CEDILIJ (Centro de Difusión e Investigación de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil), a center for children's literature in Córdoba. Her novel Memorias de Vladimir (Alfaguara, 1992) was awarded the White Ravens Prize, and has been published in several subsequent editions, most recently in 2019 by the Editorial Comunicarte. In 2000, she made her debut in the realm of adult fiction with the publication of Letargo, which was a finalist for the prestigious 2001 Rómulo Gallegos Prize. In 2008, Trilogía de Entre Ríos was awarded the Primer Premio Internacional Grinzane Covour. In 2007, Suez won a Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel La pasajera (Editorial Norma, 2008), which was translated to English as Dreaming of the Delta. In 2013, she received the Argentine National Novel Prize for Humo rojo (Editorial Edhasa, 2012). In 2015, her novel El país del diablo received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Literature Prize, and in 2020, the XX Rómulo Gallegos International Novel Prize for the best novel written in Spanish in Latin America and Spain. In 2019, White Pine Press published the translation of the novel as The Devil's Country. Rhonda Dahl Buchanan is a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Spanish and Director of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Louisville. Her many translations include: The Entre Ríos Trilogy (U of New Mexico P, 2006; 1st ed.) and Dreaming of the Delta (U Texas Tech P, 2014), four novels by Perla Suez. Her translation Quick Fix: Sudden Fiction by Ana María Shua (White Pine P, 2008) is a bilingual illustrated anthology of microfictions. She is the recipient of a 2006 NEA Literature Fellowship for the translation of Alberto Ruy-Sánchez's novel The Secret Gardens of Mogador: Voices of the Earth (White Pine Press, 2009). In 2014, White Pine Press published her translation Poetics of Wonder: Passage to Mogador by Alberto Ruy-Sánchez. In 2019, White Pine Press published her translation of Perla Suez's novel The Devil's Country, and in 2020, her translation of Mempo Giardinelli's novel Bruno Fólner's Last Tango.
