Found in Translation: Reading Group March 19, 2009

Found in Translation, the Booksmith’s first reading group will be launching this month, with a roster of exciting award-winning titles. The group will revolve around contemporary translated literature. The books discussed by the group will be available at a 15% discount.

Led by Julie, The Booksmith’s Italophile-in-residence, the group will kick things off with Senselessness, acclaimed Salvadoran author Horacio Castallanos Moya's astounding debut in English.

In this book that explores horror with hilarity and electrifying panache, a boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church (an institution he loathes) to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors. The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger-after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country.

Come by to pick up your copy so you can finish the book in time for our first meeting.

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