Rodrigo Rey Rosa is the author of many acclaimed novels and short-story collections, among them Severina and La orilla africana (The African Shore). He is the recipient of one of Guatemala's most distinguished literary prizes, the Miguel Angel Asturias National Prize in Literature, as well as the prestigious Jose Donoso Prize. The film What Sebastian Dreamt-based on one of his novels-was featured at the Sundance Film Festival.
"[Human Matter's] exploration of the history of violence and
secrecy in Central America has obvious relevance to today's
politics, but the tale of a writer trying to understand the truth
behind the things he's seeing gives the novel a resounding,
universal echo." * Vanity Fair *
"Had Rey Rosa written a nonfiction account of what he learned from
the missing-persons files [in the Historical Archive of the
Guatemala National Police], it likely would have been gripping in
its own right. Instead, Rey Rosa wrapped his real-life search in a
fictionalized container, and the results are haunting and
revelatory in ways that nonfiction couldn't accomplish." *
Bookforum *
"Secrecy lies at the heart of the story, manifesting itself in many
ways...Of a piece with the author's Dust on Her Tongue
(1992) as an exploration of political violence and its troubling
reverberations." * Kirkus *
"Human Matter makes the non-Latin American reader ask
herself things that she...would not have otherwise. It delicately
illuminates some of the pressure points of Guatemalan intellectual
history and introduces a number of roles that have obsessed the
country: the Indian, the police officer, the informer, the
turncoat." * 3:AM Magazine *
"Rey Rosa, a Guatemalan writer often compared to Roberto
Bolano...was inspired to write a meta-novel about his experiences
[visiting Guatemala's National Police archive] and the stories he
uncovered. The result...reads like the journal of a heartbroken
researcher who stumbles on the darkest truths about his native
country." * Chicago Tribune *
"Political violence in Guatemala-past and present-and how it
filters into the life of one of its citizens drives this short,
intense novel...By the end of this novel you feel glad to have come
out on the other side and carry the hope that Rodrigo Rey Rosa,
those close to him, and his fellow countrymen will do so, too." *
New York Journal of Books *
"Rodrigo Rey Rosa's fiction veers from the surreal to the
naturalistic to the speculative. In his newly-translated novel
Human Matter, he opts for a foray into (recent) history: the
novel was inspired by his visits to the Historical Archive of the
Guatemala National Police, and the disquieting information he
discovered there" * Vol. 1 Brooklyn *
"Human Matter is no conventional thriller-Rey Rosa doesn't
stop sharpening the self-referential, autofictional knife long
enough to cut that kind of drama. The drama, rather, subsists in
the writer's internal struggle to come to terms with the hideous
history of a country he has always had the privilege to escape, but
which is nevertheless his own." * Texas Observer *
"Required reading for anyone who is interested in how we remember
and record the events that so many of us call 'history.'" *
Literary Hub *
"A quite effective presentation of the near-recent Guatemalan
conditions and circumstances, with the odd (im)balance of the
near-normalcy of the everyday along with the ever-shifting and
still ominous weight of a deeply-entrenched violent history." * The
Complete Review *
"[An] intricately patterned novel...[Human Matter] leads the
reader into the maze of its confidences with great assurance." *
Asymptote Journal *
"What makes Human Matter so wonderful is the way that it is
constantly in dialogue with itself about what can be understood
from the information Rey Rosa is giving...The tension between the
fundamental pleasure of the novel -- which comes from trying to
piece together meaning out of the disparate information available
to us and the narrator's insistence that it's futile -- creates a
weirdly gratifying reading experience. Reader and narrator then are
engaged in similar journeys of discovery: ours is a fight with him
and the narrator's a fight with himself." * Chicago Review of Books
*
"An exercise in the resilience of human memory, [Human
Matter] integrates a broad swath of literary and global
cultural touchstones that situate it as a novel that is
simultaneously a great work of uniquely Guatemalan literature and a
masterful piece of world literature." * Asymptote Blog *
"What makes Rey Rosa different from other practitioners of
[autofiction] is his willingness to interrogate reality. He is less
navel-gazing and more outward-looking: Rey Rosa might have been to
the Archive in real life, but he's less interested in himself as a
person and more interested in making sense of history...Though he
reaches no conclusion, Rey Rosa highlights the contradictions and
complexities inherent in histories and the way power is wielded to
tell us otherwise." * Necessary Fiction *
"Rey Rosa might have invented a new way for metafiction to
feel...For all its trickery, Human Matter effectively
thrusts the reader into the tedium and terror of the real." * Full
Stop *
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
