Books by Sergio Chejfec
My Two Worlds
Approaching his fiftieth birthday, the narrator in "My Two Worlds" is wandering in an unfamiliar Brazilian city, in search of a park. A walker by inclination and habit, he has decided to explore the city after attending a literary conference--he was invited following the publication of his most recent novel, although, as he has been informed via anonymous e-mail, the novel is not receiving good reviews. Initially thwarted by his inability to transpose the two-dimensional information of the map onto the impassable roads and dead-ends of the three-dimensional city, once he finds the park the narrator begins to see his own thoughts, reflections, and memories mirrored in the landscape of the park and its inhabitants.
Chejfec's "My Two Worlds," an extraordinary meditation on experience, writing, and space, is at once descriptively inventive and preternaturally familiar, a novel that challenges the limitations of the genre.
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The Planets
With her blockbuster New York Times bestsellers Longitude and Galileo’s Daughter, Dava Sobel used her rare and luminous gift for weaving difficult scientific concepts into a compelling story to garner rave reviews and attract readers from across the literary spectrum. Now, in The Planets, Sobel brings her full talents to bear on what is perhaps her most ambitious subject to date—the planets of our solar system.
The sun’s family of planets become a familiar place in this personal account of the lives of other worlds. Sobel explores the planets’ origins and oddities through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. A perfect gift and a captivating journey, The Planets is a gorgeously illustrated study of our place in the universe that will mesmerize everyone who has ever gazed with awe at our night sky.
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The Planets
THE PLANETS is Dava Sobel's sweeping look at our heavenly galaxy. In the spirit of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Sobel once again brings science and history deftly to life as she explores the origins of the planets and reveals the exotic environments that exist in each of these fascinating alien worlds. After the huge national and international success of Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel tells the human story of the nine planets of our solar system. THE PLANETS tells the story of each member of our solar family, from their discovery, both mythic and historic, to the latest data from the modern era's robotic space probes and images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Whether revealing what hides behind Venus' cocoon of acid clouds, describing Jupiter's 'Technicolor lightning bolts and shimmering sheets of auroras,' or capturing first-hand the excitement at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory when the first pictures from Voyager were beamed to earth, Dava Sobel's unique tour of the solar family is filled with fascination and poetry. In lyrical prose THE PLANETS gives a breathtaking, close-up perspective on those heavenly bodies that have captured the imagination of humanity since that first glimpse at the glittering night skies. This is an extraordinary book of science, history, biography and storytelling. Timely and timeless, THE PLANETS will engage and delight as it unravels the mysteries of the cosmos.From the Compact Disc edition.
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The Planets
Dava Sobel's The Glass Universe will be available from Viking in December 2016
With her bestsellers Longitude and Galileo's Daughter, Dava Sobel introduced readers to her rare gift for weaving complex scientific concepts into a compelling narrative. Now Sobel brings her full talents to bear on what is perhaps her most ambitious topic to date-the planets of our solar system. Sobel explores the origins and oddities of the planets through the lens of popular culture, from astrology, mythology, and science fiction to art, music, poetry, biography, and history. Written in her characteristically graceful prose, The Planets is a stunningly original celebration of our solar system and offers a distinctive view of our place in the universe.
* A New York Times extended bestseller
* A Featured Alternate of the Book-of-the-Month Club, History Book Club, Scientific American Book Club, and Natural Science Book Club
* Includes 11 full-color illustrations by artist Lynette R. Cook
"[The Planets] lets us fall in love with the heavens all over again."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Playful . . . lyrical . . . a guided tour so imaginative that we forget we're being educated as we're being entertained."
-Newsweek
" [Sobel] has outdone her extraordinary talent for keeping readers enthralled. . . . Longitude and Galileo's Daughter were exciting enough, but The Planets has a charm of its own . . . . A splendid and enticing book."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"A sublime journey. [Sobel's] writing . . . is as bright as the sun and its thinking as star-studded as the cosmos."
-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"An incantatory serenade to the Solar System. Grade A-"
-Entertainment Weekly
"Like Sobel's [Longitude and Galileo's Daughter] . . . [The Planets] combines masterful storytelling with clear, engaging explanations of the essential scientific facts."
-Physics World
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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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The Dark
by Lemony Snicket, Emma Haughton, Sergio Chejfec
Laszlo is afraid of the dark.
The dark lives in the same house as Laszlo. Mostly, though, the dark stays in the basement and doesn't come into Lazslo's room. But one night, it does.
This is the story of how Laszlo stops being afraid of the dark.
With emotional insight and poetic economy, two award-winning talents team up to conquer a universal childhood fear.
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$18.99
The Dark
by Lemony Snicket, Emma Haughton, Sergio Chejfec
ONE DEAD BODY. TWELVE SUSPECTS. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR DARKNESS.
'Outstanding ... Haughton writes vividly about a claustrophobic community ... her novel really is a superlative locked-room mystery' - Sunday Times (Crime Book of the Month)
'Haughton has created a fantastically atmospheric setting ... it's a chilling race to the finish to discover whodunnit' - Observer
In the most inhospitable environment - cut off from the rest of the world -there's a killer on the loose.
A&E doctor Kate North has been knocked out of her orbit by a personal tragedy. So when she's offered the opportunity to be an emergency replacement at the UN research station in Antarctica, she jumps at the chance. The previous doctor, Jean-Luc, died in a tragic accident while out on the ice. The move seems an ideal solution for Kate: no one knows about her past; no one is checking up on her. But as total darkness descends for the winter, she begins to suspect that Jean-Luc's death wasn't accidental at all.
And the more questions she asks, the more dangerous it becomes . . .
'A sense of growing menace pervades ... the freezing wasteland and claustrophobic workings of the research station are finely rendered' - Financial Times
'The kind of heart-pounding, sleep-stealing read that you want to recommend to everyone you meet. An absolutely thrilling book' - CASS GREEN
'Chilling and atmospheric . . . had me turning the pages late into the night' - MARK EDWARDS
'Tense, thrilling and unpredictable, with one of the most unique and dangerous settings imaginable' - ALLIE REYNOLDS
'Set against the dangerous sub-zero temperatures end endless night of the Antarctic...Brilliantly atmospheric and terrifying' - CATHERINE COOPER
'Tense, twisted and quite literally chilling - a locked room mystery in a unique setting where no one can be trusted' - SUSI HOLLIDAY
'Atmospheric, original and full of tension' - AMANDA JENNINGS
'A real edge-of-the-seat plot. I loved it. Original and accomplished' - J.A. CORRIGAN
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The Dark
by Lemony Snicket, Emma Haughton, Sergio Chejfec
"Early in Sergio Chejfec's The Dark, the nameless narrator describes his disorientation when looking over a landscape as 'the vertigo of simple things.' This phrase describes the experience of reading Chejfec's novel. . . . These moments, when Chejfec combines exquisite prose with the human yearning for truth and beauty, keep us reading, weighing the novel's contradictions, sifting through the narrator's abstract reflections in search of his life’s meaning."Rain Taxi
Opening with the presently shut-in narrator reminiscing about a past relationship with Delia, a young factory worker, The Dark employs Chejfec's signature style with an emphasis on the geography and motion of the mind, to recount the time the narrator spent with this multifaceted, yet somewhat absent, woman. On their daily walks he becomes privy to the ways in which the working class functions; he studies and analyzes its structure and mindset, finding it incredibly organized, self-explanatory, and even beautiful. He repeatedly attempts to apply his 'book' knowledge to explain what he sees and wants to understand of Delia's existence, and though the difference between their social classes is initially a source of great intrigueif not obsessionhe must eventually learn that there comes a point where the boundary between observer and participant can dissolve with disarming speed.
In a voice that favors erudite distance, yet simultaneously demands intimate attention, The Dark is the most captivating example of Sergio Chejfec's unique narrative approach, and a resonant novel that calls into question the necessity, risks, and fallout behind the desire and attempt to know another person.
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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The Incompletes (Open Letter)
“Now I am going to tell the story of something that happened one night years ago, and the events of the morning and afternoon that followed.”
The Incompletes begins with this simple promise. But to try to get at the complete meaning of the day’s events, the narrator must first take us on an international tour―from the docks of Buenos Aires, to Barcelona, until we check in at the gloomy Hotel Salgado with the narrator’s transient friend Felix in Moscow. From scraps of information left behind on postcards and hotel stationery, the narrator hopes to reconstruct Felix’s stay there. With flights of imagination, he conjures up the hotel’s labyrinthine hallways, Masha, the captive hotel manager, and the city’s public markets, filled with piles of broken televisions.
Each character carries within them a secret that they don’t quite understand―a stash of foreign money hidden in the pages of a book, a wasteland at the edge of the city, a mysterious shaft of light in the sky. The Incompletes is a novel disturbed by this half-knowledge, haunted by the fact that any complete version of events is always just outside our reach.
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Baroni, a Journey
Fiction. Latinx Studies. Art. "It is hard to think of another contemporary writer who, marrying true intellect with simple description of a space, simultaneously covers so little and so much ground." --Times Literary Supplement
Baroni is a real person. Baroni is a fictional character. This novel demonstrates that the two statements are not contradictory. The real person is Rafaela Baroni, a renowned popular artist who lives in a small town in the Andean foothills of Venezuela. There she devotes herself to carving wooden figures, almost always religious, to curing the sick, to predicting misfortunes, to dying. Baroni dies and returns to life: twice a year she performs her own death. The fictional character is a vague and multifaceted being who is transfigured into memory, landscape, and communal experiences.
BARONI, A JOURNEY is the evolution of an ever-changing gaze, which goes from the main character to the country she inhabits, from the unknowns of popular religion to the no less mysterious conditions for artistic creation. As in all of Sergio Chejfec's books, in Baroni, a Journey the representation of thought occupies a central place in the writing. And once more, his doubts and digressions, together with the marginal beings he chooses to display, are the hallmark of a very personal style.
"On first reading Chejfec, we recall many admired authors, but at a later moment--a more solid and lasting one--we realize that he resembles no one, and that he has chosen an unusual and quite distinctive path, one that reveals itself slowly because of the demanding and very personal searches the author himself carries out in his narrative." --Enrique Vila-Matas
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