WHITE PINE PRESS
an independent literary publisher
Bruno Fólner’s Last Tango - Mempo Giardinelli - trans. by Rhonda Buchanan
$17.00 - ISBN 978-1-945680-41-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930107
Bruno Fólner’s Last Tango tells the story of transformation. That of a man who knows that death is stalking him, so he bets all he has on life, even at the cost of losing everything he created. With exquisite prose and absolute control over the psychology of a character who knows himself less than he believes, this novel narrates a journey of passion toward the unknown. It may end in tragedy or liberation, but the journey justifies the end.
Out of love and desperation, a man suddenly sees the possibility of changing his life completely and goes for it. It’s a daring move, and as with every bold venture, there’s a price to pay. In this case, a very high one that involves the death of all that he loves and the need to abandon his identity and reinvent himself. Bruno Fólner’s Last Tango tells the story of the transformation of a man who knows death is stalking him and so he bets all he has on life, even at the cost of losing everything. With an absolute control over the psychology of a character who knows himself less than he believes, and an exquisite prose, translated by Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, this new novel by the Argentine writer Mempo Giardinelli narrates a journey of passion toward the unknown. It may end in tragedy or liberation, but the journey justifies the end.
Mempo Giardinelli is an award-winning author of novels, short stories, essays, and children’s fiction, and a journalist, and founder of La Fundación Mempo Giardinelli. He lived in exile, in Mexico (1976-1984), where his first works of fiction were published. Giardinelli has garnered many prestigious awards for his works of fiction and essays, among them the Premio Rómulo Gallegos (1993), which is the most important literary award in the Spanish-speaking world. His works have been translated to twenty-six languages and are the subject of critical articles, dissertations, and books published in Argentina and other South American countries, the United States, and Europe.
Rhonda Dahl Buchanan is a Professor of Spanish and the Director of the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at the University of Louisville. She has translated the narrative fiction of the Argentine writers Ana María Shua, Perla Suez, Tununa Mercado, and Mempo Giardinelli, and the Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez, among others, and is the author of numerous critical studies on contemporary Latin American writers. Her translation of three novels by Perla Suez, The Entre Ríos Trilogy, was published in 2006 by the University of New Mexico Press in their Jewish Latin America Series. She is the recipient of a 2006 NEA Literature Fellowship for the translation of Alberto Ruy-Sánchez’s novel The Secret Gardens of Mogador: Voices of the Earth (New York, White Pine Press, 2009). Her translation Quick Fix: Sudden Fiction by Ana María Shua, a bilingual illustrated anthology of microfictions, was published in 2008 by White Pine Press.