A tale of two Londons, and two writers obsessed with Peter Pan, from one of Latin America’s most playful and stylish novelists A children’s writer unreels a shocking confession in Rodrigo Fresán’s dazzling English-language debut. Known to millions by his pen name, Peter Hook, Fresán’s hero has survived the death of his rock-star parents, and a childhood surrounded by 1960s excess, to become the most successful children’s author of his generation, best loved as the creator of the time-traveling boy Jim Yang. Over the course of one night, Peter tells his life story—and that of J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan—to the child actor cursed with playing Jim Yang in the movies. Gradually, a fantastical and terrible tale emerges, a tale of shadow identities and suicide, lost boys and foundlings. Moving between the Edwardian age and Swinging London, Kensington Gardens is an exploration of the charms and perils of nostalgia and children’s literature from one of Latin America’s most celebrated young novelists.

Kensington Gardens: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Fresán, Rodrigo

Contemporary

Farrar. Straus and Giroux

Publication of Kensington Gardens marks the English language debut of one of Latin America's most brilliant, playful, and stylish novelists, Rodrigo Fresan. Spanning more than a century from the late Victorian period - and the intimately-drawn details of the life of JM Barrie - to the dawn of the new millennium - and the fractured life of an internationally acclaimed children's novelist, Peter Hook - Kensington Gardens weaves an intricate cat's cradle of narratives around the Lysergic-London of the Swinging Sixties and the boy who never grew up. Hook is a survivor and witness to a period littered with corpses and casualties. Growing up in a vast west London estate called Neverland, his childhood was shaped by the mysterious, premature death of his younger brother, his parents' rock n roll lifestyle and his father's performances in a seminal band of the time, the Beaten (aka) The Beaten Victorians (aka) The Victorians. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) such dysfunctional beginnings, Hook has become the most successful children's author of his generation as the author of the time-travelling, Jim Yang.  In Kensington Gardens, Hook narrates his story (and that of Barrie, Peter Pan and Llewelyn Davies) to Keiko Kai, the Japanese actor cursed with the role of playing Jim Yang in the blockbuster movies of his creation. Over the course of one night in a flat in Kensington Gardens, a fantastical and terrible story emerges; a story of shadow identities and suicide, lost boys and found orphans. Coloured with unique splashes of Psychedelic Edwardiana, Kensington Gardens is an exploration of the charms and perils of Children's Literature, told in the torrential prose of a contemporary master.

Kensington Gardens

Literary

Faber&Faber

"A kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room."―Jonathan Lethem
An aging writer, disillusioned with the state of literary culture, attempts to disappear in the most cosmically dramatic manner: traveling to the Hadron Collider, merging with the God particle, and transforming into an omnipresent deity―a meta-writer―capable of rewriting reality.
With biting humor and a propulsive, contagious style, amid the accelerated particles of his characteristic obsessions―the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the music of Pink Floyd and The Kinks, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the links between great art and the lives of the artists who create it―Fresán takes us on a whirlwind tour of writers and muses, madness and genius, friendships, broken families, and alternate realities, exploring themes of childhood, loss, memory, aging, and death.
Drawing inspiration from the scope of modern classics and the structural pyrotechnics of the postmodern masters, the Argentine once referred to as "a pop Borges" delivers a powerful defense of great literature, a celebration of reading and writing, of the invented parts―the stories we tell ourselves to give shape to our world.
Rodrigo Fresán is the author of nine books of fiction that together compose an expansive, interconnected fictional universe―a complex system of storylines, resonances, and self-reference that call to mind the works of David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and Roberto Bolaño.
Will Vanderhyden received fellowships from the NEA and Lannan Foundation to work on The Invented Part.

The Invented Part

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Open Letter

At its core, The Bottom of the Sky is a novel about two young boys in love with other planets and a disturbingly beautiful girl. An homage to the history of American science fiction, it’s also about the Gulf War, 9/11, and a mysterious “incident.” It’s like a Kurt Vonnegut novel told by David Lynch through the lens of Philip K. Dick.

Bottom of the Sky

Following his failure to break into the Hadron Collider and merge with the so-called “God particle,” The Writer from The Invented Part can no longer write or sleep. Instead, he lies awake, imagining and reimagining key moments of his life, spinning out a series of insomniac visions every bit as thought-provoking as they are dreamlike. A mysterious foundation dedicated to preserving dreams, suddenly invaluable in the wake of the dream-eradicating White Plague; a psycho-lyrical-photophobic terrorist; an electric and mercurial lullaby; three lunatic sisters (and an eclipsed brother) who write from the darkest side of the most wuthering lunar heights; a hallucinating prisoner and a hallucinatory family; a genius addicted to butterflies and an FBI agent addicted to that genius; a looney and lysergic uncle and parents who model but are not model parents; a revolutionary staging of Shakespeare for the children of chic guerrillas; a city of sleepless bookshops; and a writer who might be 100 years old. Or not.
With characteristic wit, careening style, and array of cultural references, high and low and everything in between―from Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, and Vladimir Nabokov to Talking Heads, superhero movies, and Rick and Morty―the second volume of Fresán’s trilogy is one of the most ambitious, unique, and entertaining novels of our time.

The Dreamed Part

Humor & Satire

About the Author\nRodrigo Fresán is the author of eleven works of fiction, including Kensington Gardens, Mantra, The Invented Part, winner of the 2018 Best Translated Book Award, and, most recently, Melvill. A self-professed “referential maniac,” his works incorporate many elements from science fiction (Philip K. Dick in particular) alongside pop culture and literary references. According to Jonathan Lethem, “he’s a kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room.” In 2017, he received the Prix Roger Caillois awarded by PEN Club France every year to both a French and a Latin American writer.\nWill Vanderhyden received an MA in Literary Translation Studies from the University of Rochester. He has translated fiction by Carlos Labbé, Edgardo Cozarinsky, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Juan Marsé, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Rodrigo Fresán, and Elvio Gandolfo. He received NEA and Lannan fellowships to translate another of Fresán’s novels, The Invented Part.\nThe protagonist-narrator of The Invented Part and The Dreamed Part returns to find an answer the question: how does a writer remember? In particular, how does a he―a writer who no longer writes but can’t stop reading and rereading himself―remember. 
The Writer takes us hurtling through the refracted funhouse of his recursive and referential-maniac mind with a host of debut performances and redux appearances: the howling ghost of electricity and the defective Mr. Trip; the wuthering and heightened Penelope and her lost son; 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner; the absent Pertusato, Nicolasito and the omnipresent IKEA; the dead Colma, the deceased ZZYZX, the departed Nothing, and the immortal Sad Songs; the irrealist Vladimir Nabokov and the surrealist Karmas; Wish You Were Here playing on (im)mobil(izing) phones and Dracula being invited in; the disturbed Uncle Hey Walrus and parents who are models but not at all model parents; The Beatles and The Beatles; a nonexistent country of origin and a city in flames; an unforgettable night that wants nothing more than to be rewritten; and so many more accelerated particles and freewheeling fragments and interlinked cells searching for a storyline to give them some structure, some meaning. 
With mordant wit, capacious intelligence, and vertiginous prose, The Remembered Part closes Rodrigo Fresán’s sprawling tryptic novel. A novel that has at its heart the three component parts of literary creation, the engines that drive the writing of fictional lives and the narration of real works of art: invention, dream, and memory. It is a masterpiece by one of contemporary literature’s most daring and innovative writers.

The Remembered Part (Spanish Literature Series)

Melvill

United States

Genre Fiction

SEUIL

"Pocas novelas tan apasionantes he leido en los ultimos anos." Roberto BolanoDice Rodrigo Fresan a proposito de Mantra: "Como acorralar a todo Mexico adentro de un libro? Creo que eso fue lo que me propuse a la hora de armar esta novela. Me interesaba que un libro sobre un pais y una ciudad -y una ciudad grande como un pais- respondiera a la forma y al espiritu que lo habia inspirado. De ahi que Mantra sea un libro monstruoso, casi una aberracion literaria donde los narradores mutan en otros narradores (la novela empieza siendo narrada por un tumor cerebral, continua con la voz de un muerto frances desde un inframundo precolombino para terminar en los dientes y la lengua de una especie de momia-robot que busca a su padre por las futuras ruinas de un D.F. apocaliptico), donde el tiempo es circular, donde los muertos cuentan la historia y donde bajo la capucha del Santo apenas se esconde la certeza de un demonio."Rodrigo Fresan nacio en Buenos Aires en 1963. Ha escrito varios libros. Su primera novela, Esperanto, obtuvo un gran exito de critica. En la actualidad reside en Barcelona.

Mantra

POINTS

Mantra (Spanish Edition)

Dramas & Plays

Debolsillo]

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Books by Fresán, Rodrigo

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fresán, Rodrigo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Kensington Gardens: A Novel

Kensington Gardens

The Invented Part

Bottom of the Sky

The Dreamed Part

The Remembered Part (Spanish Literature Series)

Melvill

Melvill

Mantra

Mantra (Spanish Edition)