About this item
"Right from the start I picked her for a thief, although that day she didn't take anything. . . . I knew she'd be back," the narrator/bookseller of Severina recalls in this novel's opening pages. Imagine a dark-haired book thief as alluring as she is dangerous. Imagine the mesmerized bookseller secretly tracking the volumes she steals, hoping for insight into her character, her motives, her love life. In Rodrigo Rey Rosa's hands, this tale of obsessive love is told with almost breathless precision and economy. The bookstore owner is soon entangled in Severina's mystery: seductive and peripatetic, of uncertain nationality, she steals books to actually read them and to share with her purported grandfather, Seor Blanco. In this unsettling exploration of the alienating and simultaneously liberating power of love, the bookseller's monotonous existence is rocked by the enigmatic Severina.
About the Author
Rodrigo Rey Rosa was born in Guatemala in 1958. He emigrated to New York in 1980, and in 1982 he moved to Morocco. American expatriate writer Paul Bowles, with whom Rey Rosa had been corresponding, translated his first three books into English. Rey Rosa has based many of his writings and stories on legends and myths that are indigenous to Latin America and North Africa. Out of all of his many works, seven have been translated into English: The Beggar's Knife, Dust on her Tongue, The Pelcari Project, The Good Cripple, The African Shore,Severina, and now, Chaos, A Fable. In 2004, Rey Rosa was awarded the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature, from Guatemala, and in 2015 the Ibero-American José Donoso Prize. He lives in Guatemala City.
