The Taiga Syndrome
ABOUT
THE BOOK
The Taiga Syndrome follows an unnamed Ex-Detective as she searches for a couple who has fled to the far reaches of the earth. A betrayed husband is convinced by a brief telegram that his second ex-wife wants him to track her down – that she wants to be found. He hires the Ex-Detective, who sets out with a translator into a snowy, hostile forest where strange things happen and translation betrays both sense and one’s senses. Tales of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood haunt the Ex-Detective’s quest into a territory overrun with the primitive excesses of Capitalism accumulation and expulsion, corruption and cruelty – though the lessons of her journey are more experiential than moral: that just as love can fly away, sometimes unloving flies away as well.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Aviva
Kana
Aviva Kana is a translator, researcher and instructor from Washington State. Currently a PhD candidate in Hispanic literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, her work focuses on Latin American literature, gender, translation and applied linguistics. Her translations have been published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, PEN America and Latin American Literature Today. Her translation (in collaboration with Suzanne Jill Levine) of Cristina Rivera Garza’s El mal de la taiga (The Taiga Syndrome) will be published in the fall of 2018.
Aviva Kana is a translator, researcher and instructor from Washington State. Currently a PhD candidate in Hispanic literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, her work focuses on Latin American literature, gender, translation and applied linguistics. Her translations have been published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, PEN America and Latin American Literature Today. Her translation (in collaboration with Suzanne Jill Levine) of Cristina Rivera Garza’s El mal de la taiga (The Taiga Syndrome) will be published in the fall of 2018.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Jill
Levine
Poet and translator Suzanne Jill Levine earned a BA at Vassar College, an MA at Columbia University, and a PhD at New York University. Her poetry chapbook Reckoning (2012) combines her original poetry with her translations of the work of Octavio Paz, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Severo Sarduy. She is also the author of the literary biography Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman (2000) and the critical work The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (1991).
As a translator, Levine has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation and a PEN American Award for Career Achievement in Hispanic Studies. She has translated the works of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Manuel Puig, and her recent translations include Luis Negrón’s 2010 debut, Mundo Cruel: Stories (2013), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction, and José Donoso’s posthumously published 2007 novel, The Lizard’s Tale (2011), which won a PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Levine also edited the five-volume Penguin Classics editions of Jorge Luis Borges’s essays and poetry.
Levine lives in Santa Barbara, California. She and teaches translation studies and in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Poet and translator Suzanne Jill Levine earned a BA at Vassar College, an MA at Columbia University, and a PhD at New York University. Her poetry chapbook Reckoning (2012) combines her original poetry with her translations of the work of Octavio Paz, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Severo Sarduy. She is also the author of the literary biography Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman (2000) and the critical work The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction (1991).
As a translator, Levine has been awarded grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation and a PEN American Award for Career Achievement in Hispanic Studies. She has translated the works of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Manuel Puig, and her recent translations include Luis Negrón’s 2010 debut, Mundo Cruel: Stories (2013), which won the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction, and José Donoso’s posthumously published 2007 novel, The Lizard’s Tale (2011), which won a PEN Center USA Literary Award for Translation. Levine also edited the five-volume Penguin Classics editions of Jorge Luis Borges’s essays and poetry.
Levine lives in Santa Barbara, California. She and teaches translation studies and in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
This is a novel that invites to philosophical reflection, in as much it seeks ultimate explanations for apparently unjustified decisions. This detective story combines a simple plot, a complex narrative structure and fairy-tale references to ask what might be behind the contagious madness we human beings must cope with.
Rivera Garza’s work has been praised by Carlos Fuentes, and received the Anna Seghers Award for Latin American Literature (2005); the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Award (2001 and 2009); and more recently the Roger Caillois Award for Latin American Literature (2013). Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, Mexico