Description
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, Simpatia, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.
About the Author
Rodrigo Blanco Calderón is a writer and editor. He has received various awards for his stories both inside and outside Venezuela. In 2007, he was invited to join the Bogotá39 group, which brings together the best Latin American narrators under thirty-nine years old. In 2013, he was a guest writer at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. In 2014, his story “Emuntorios” was included in Thirteen Crime Stories from Latin America, volume number forty-six of McSweeney s. With his first novel, The Night (English translation Daniel Hahn and Noel Hernández González, Seven Stories Press 2022), he won the 2016 Paris Rive Gauche Prize, the Critics Award in Venezuela, and the 2019 Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Prize. His story “The Mad People of Paris,” included in his collection, Sacrifices (English translation Thomas Bunstead, Seven Stories Press, 2022), won the O. Henry Prize and was included in The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, guest edited by Lauren Groff.
Daniel Hahn is a writer, translator and editor. His translation of The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agalusa won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007. His translation of A General Theory of Oblivion, also by José Eduardo Agalusa, won the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award. His other translations include Pele’s autobiography and work by novelists José Luís Peixoto, Philippe Claudel, María Dueñas, José Saramago, Eduardo Halfon and others In 2017, Daniel Hahn donated half his winnings from the International Dublin Literary Award to help establish a new prize for debut literary translation – the TA First Translation Prize, administered by the Society of Authors in the UK. Daniel Hahn was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to literature. He won the 2023 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.
Noel Hernández González is originally from Spain and has an MA in Literary Translation from the University of East Anglia. He is co-translator, with Daniel Hahn, of two novels by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón: The Night (Seven Stories Press 2022) and Simpatía (Seven Stories Press 2024).
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