The Planets
A 2013 Best Translated Book Award Finalist
When he reads about a mysterious explosion in the distant countryside, the narrator's thoughts turn to his disappeared childhood friend, M, who was abducted from his home years ago, during a spasm of political violence in Buenos Aires in the early 1970s. He convinces himself that M must have died in this explosion, and he begins to tell the story of their friendship through a series interconnected vignettes, hoping in this way to reanimate his friend and relive the time they spent together wandering the streets of Buenos Aires.
Sergio Chejfec's The Planets is an affecting and innovative exploration of mourning, remembrance, and friendship by one of Argentina's modern masters.
Sergio Chejfec, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. He teaches at NYU.
Heather Cleary is a translator of fiction, criticism, and poetry. In 2005, she was awarded a Translation Fund grant from the PEN American Center for her work on Oliverio Girondo.
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"A novel that is both unique and opportune."--Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill
"Chejfec's words wander through all manner of tangential topics, and while the story seems, on the surface, as haphazardly constructed as a collection of memories should and would be, there is no doubt about the meticulousness behind the text. Heather Cleary's translation walks this tightrope perfectly, displaying with an uncanny grace both the chaos and the order that make up the core of the book."--Full Stop
"To read The Planets is not so much to implant oneself within its narrated world as it is to discover oneself in this world's orbit. Whereas in Chejfec's English-language debut, My Two Worlds, the reader is invited into not merely the narrator's world but his very perception of it, The Planets is distinguished by the ambivalence of its intimacy--the holding of its reader at arm's length, in an abeyant proximity."--The Quarterly Conversation
"The Planets is a reflective book about friendship and loss that should be read slowly. For even if M's city is not ours, grief is a landscape we all come to know."--Foreward Reviews
"Borgesian in its poetic beauty, Chejfec writes with lyrical grace and astuteness."--Newcity Lit
