Rodrigo Blanco Calderón Knihy

Caracas 2010: společnost je paralyzována režimem Huga Cháveze, chybí potraviny, jsou přerušovány dodávky elektřiny. Dva přátelé – psychiatr a spisovatel – se scházejí v asijském bistru a debatují o literatuře, hudbě a aktuálních vraždách venezuelských žen. Spisovatel má v hlavě velký „gotický“ román nazvaný The Night podle kultovní skladby skupiny Morphine. Autor představuje desítky osudů drobných hrdinů, které míchá s reálnými postavami ze světa hudby, literatury a politiky. Závěr díla je apokalyptický: i múza našich přátel Margarita je s vlastní matkou brutálně zavražděna. Přátelé se rozcházejí. Caracas se propadá do nekonečné tmy.

A vivid, unforgettable and unsentimental tale of the teeming wildlife that flourished on the banks of the industrial Tyne in the early 1950s, and still flourishes there today, The Kestrel in the Crane is illustrated with the artwork of James Alder and his son Rod, who finished the account his father began in 1953.

The protagonists of these seven stories are already defeated by their own messianism. They retrospectively recount the unjust circumstances that turned them into victims or criminals. The cast of antiheroes in Sacrifices includes a blind man, Tiresias, that seeks intimacy in a labyrinthic Mexico City; a dying pilot who finds solace reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery on a beach in Biarritz; and a taxidermist painter who predicts various Venezuelan massacres in his own Guernica. These revelatory short stories tread the line between surrealism and realism, proving that fiction is always political. Despite the international settings, Blanco Calderon's mythical characters are the product of a Venezuelan legacy of martyrs whose sacrifices failed to lead the country to democracy.

Simpatia is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina's departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Mart­n Ayala. Thanks to Ayala's will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission - to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina. This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez. The untranslatable title,