The Magazine – Page 13 – stuff & nonsense

The Last Dream

Post author By Webmaster
Post date 27th October 2024

Book cover of THE LAST DREAM by Pedro Almodóvar, translated by Frank Wynne. The cover is a pink vase of flowers with a pair of black sunglassed, making it look like Almodóvar's trademark pompadour hair.

Pedro Almodóvar’s The Last Dream brings together twelve unpublished stories from his personal archive, written between the late sixties and the present day. Delivering a tantalising glimpse into Almodóvar’s world, this wildly inventive collection reflects his most intimate obsessions, as well as his daring evolution as an artist.

Ranging from ‘The Last Dream’ – a beautiful chronicle of the death of Almodóvar’s mother – to a love story between Jesus and Barabbas;, a cult film director out in search of painkillers on a bank holiday weekend, the original story behind the film Bad Education, and a gothic tale of a repentant vampire, these stories delight and surprise.

The Last Dream is a celebration of the relationship between life and art, fiction and reality from an artist unafraid to write about our most intimate moments.

Translated by Frank Wynne.

Bookshop.org (UK) | Bookshop.org (USA) | Waterstones | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Times Literary Supplement

Stories and vignettes from a celebrated film-maker – TLS | Times Literary Supplement

Post author By Webmaster
Post date 25th October 2024

Stories and vignettes from a celebrated film-maker TLS | Times Literary Supplement

Times Literary Supplement

Stories and vignettes from a celebrated film-maker – Times Literary Supplement

Post author By Webmaster
Post date 25th October 2024

Stories and vignettes from a celebrated film-maker Times Literary Supplement

French Mathias Énard terribleman.com Translation

The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

Post author By Webmaster
Post date 24th October 2024

Cover image of the US edition of the novel The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild, by Mathias Énard, translated by Frank Wynne WINNER OF THE 2024 FRENCH-AMERICAN FOUNDATION TRANSLATION PRIZE

To research his thesis on contemporary agrarian life, anthropology student David Mazon moves from Paris to La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a village in the marshlands of western France. Determined to capture the essence of rurality, the intrepid scholar shuttles around on his moped to interview local residents. Unbeknownst to David, in these nondescript lands, once theatres of wars and revolutions, Death leads the dance. When an existence ends, the Wheel of Life recycles its soul and hurls it back into the world as microbe, human or wild animal, sometimes in the past, sometimes in the future. Only once a year do Death and the living observe a temporary truce, during a gargantuan three-day feast where gravediggers gorge themselves on food, libations and language. Brimming with Mathias Énard’s characteristic wit and encyclopaedic brilliance, The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild is a riotous novel where the edges between past and present are constantly dissolving against a Rabelaisian backdrop of excess – and a paradoxically macabre paean to life’s richness.