The Devil of the Provinces
Davis
(Translator)
Description
After a series of failures, a biologist returns to his hometown to live with his grieving mother. But in this gripping crime novel that upends the genre's conventions, strange events unravel what he thought he knew of his past, his present, and himself.
When a biologist returns to Colombia after fifteen years abroad, he quickly becomes entangled in the trappings of his past and his increasingly bizarre present: the unsolved murder of his brother, a boarding school where girls give birth to strange creatures, a chance encounter with his irrevocably changed first love. A brush with a well-connected acquaintance leads to a biotechnology job offer, and he's gradually drawn into a web of conspiracy. Ultimately, he may be destined to remain in the city he'd hoped never to see again-in The Devil of the Provinces, nothing is as it seems.
Product Details
| Publisher | Coffee House Press |
| Publish Date | September 12, 2023 |
| Pages | 176 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781566896771 |
| Dimensions | 7.6 X 5.0 X 0.7 inches | 0.4 pounds |
About the Author
Juan Cárdenas (1978) is a Colombian art critic, curator, translator, and author of seven works of fiction, most recently the story collection Volver a comer del árbol de la ciencia and the novel Elástico de sombra. He has translated the works of such writers as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Gordon Lish, David Ohle, J. M. Machado de Assis, and Eça de Queirós. In 2014, his novel Los estratos received the Otras Voces Otros Ámbitos Prize. In 2017, he was named one of the thirty-nine best Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine by the Hay Festival in Bogotá. Cárdenas currently coordinates the masters program in creative writing at the Caro y Cuervo Institute in Bogotá, where he works as a professor and researcher.
Lizzie Davis is a translator, a writer, and an editor at Coffee House Press. Her recent projects include Juan Cárdenas's Ornamental (a finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Prize); Elena Medel's The Wonders, cotranslated with Thomas Bunstead; and work by Valeria Luiselli, Pilar Fraile Amador, and Aura García-Junco.
Reviews
Praise for The Devil of the Provinces
Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature
Vulture, "Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2023"
"Cáaacute;rdenas generates queasy intrigue from something as strange as the birth of a devil child and as mundane as a text message that has been read but not replied to. . . . Briskly paced, thoughtful, and truly weird: a whodunit that takes on the very idea of blame." -Kirkus, starred review
"A dizzying and beguiling yarn. . . . A crime story, but one without clear answers or culprits. . . . Cárdenas describes the sweltering heat in beautifully strange terms, adding to the sense of small-town oppression, where self-deprecating jokes are 'a kind of determinist doctrine.' South American fiction fans will love this." --Publishers Weekly
"Juan Cárdenas's prose is enigmatic, hallucinatory, intense. I'm willing to follow wherever he goes. A writer of uncommon beauty." --Rodrigo Hasbúuacute;n
"A supernatural thriller, a murder mystery, and a rumination on personal and environmental catastrophe--The Devil of the Provinces is none of these things and all of these things. With skillful economy, Juan Cárdenas makes the reader an accomplice in a story where everyone is complicit. A brilliant, ambitious novel that searches for meaning in the shadows of a dangerous and ambiguous world." --Mark Haber
Praise for Ornamental
Finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Award
"With pitch-black comedy, Ornamental, nimbly translated by Lizzie Davis, channels the ways that egomaniacs in science and art--in any field--rise to the top, up the pyramid of capitalism. . . . [T]he rhythm of Cárdenas's writing compels and reassures, as if driven by the very humanity the lab has helped suppress." --Nathan Scott McNamara, The New York Times
"[A] work of subtlety and restraint. . . . What makes Ornamental so deeply affecting, however, is not that its pages come together to form a beautiful work of exterior art--though it does--but its ability to cast unease on our interior worlds. . . . Brilliantly executed and cleverly translated, Ornamental leaves us with a fresh understanding of the creation of art and the nature of meaning-making." --Dashiel Carrera, Los Angeles Review of Books
"In his thrilling novel Ornamental, Colombian art critic, translator, curator, and renowned author Juan Cárdenas masterfully tells the tale of the junction of an experimenting doctor, his wife, and his subsidized voluntary narcotic patient. . . . [E]xpertly translated by seasoned editor Lizzie Davis." --Ellie Simon, World Literature Today
"In spare and economical prose, Cárdenas sketches a highly stratified world, where drugs link high society and neighborhoods that are 'a single crush of old houses and ruins'. . . . the overall effect offers both thrills and chills." --Publishers Weekly
"[An] absurdist critique of class inequality. . . . Cárdenas also dabbles in art criticism and curation and uses that knowledge to acidic effect in a social drama that borders on the phantasmagorical. . . . with captivating moments." --Kirkus
"This is the first of Cárdenas's novels to be translated
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