A Practical Guide to Levitation: Stories

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Product Details
Price
$22.00  $20.46
Publisher
Archipelago Books
Publish Date
Pages
256
Dimensions
5.6 X 6.8 X 0.8 inches | 0.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781953861627

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About the Author
José Eduardo Agualusa is one of the leading voices in Angola and the Portuguese language today. Also available in English are Creole, winner of the Portuguese Grand Prize for Literature; The Book of Chameleons, which won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007; A General Theory of Oblivion, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and won the International Dublin Literary Award; The Society of Reluctant Dreamers; My Father's Wives; and Rainy Season. In 2019, Agualusa was awarded the most important literary prize in Angola, the Angolan National Prize for Culture and Arts. His novel Os Vivos e os Outros, also forthcoming from Archipelago, won the 2021 Portuguese PEN Prize.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator. He is the author of several works of non-fiction, including the history book The Tower Menagerie. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, a series of reading guides for children and teenagers. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish, and French) include fiction from Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
Reviews
"This astonishing collection by Angolan writer Agualusa brims with imagination . . . Often mordantly funny . . . Agualusa's wondrous tales balance fantasy with skillful historical storytelling and a palpable distaste for the politics of oppression."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A Practical Guide to Levitation brings together thirty of José Eduardo Aguaulusa's short stories, some written just last year and some so old he doesn't remember writing them. Naturally, there is a real variety to be found here . . . Agualusa's literary idols pop us as characters . . . The stories . . . are brought together by abstract and metaphysical topics, with the backdrop of colonization and civil war everpresent."
--Colm McKenna, New Pages

"When a collection opens with a story called "Borges in Hell," you might expect to have an idea of the book's contents. And yes, this does begin with a tale of a certain influential writer realizing that he is in the wrong afterlife--establishing concepts of metaphysics, surrealism, and literary history that run throughout the book. But these stories also vary dramatically in tone, from stark realism to trips into the satirical uncanny. It's a memorable showcase of one writer's range."
--Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders