Translation Rights TQE / The Horizon and Other Returns

Tuyo es el reino (Yours is the Kingdom), by the Cuban writer Abilio Estévez, was published as part of our Andanzas collection and it was absolutely clear to us that this novel would not go unnoticed. We have been proven right: critics have received it with fervent praise; from the moment of its publication, readers have called for several reprints, and foreign publishers are in the process of translating it into eleven languages, confirming that we have a masterpiece before us.

“The stories that make up this volume”, says the author, “were created over several years, that is to say, during different spiritual seasons. The oldest ones belong to the mid 80’s; the most recent ones were composed around 1996. Many of them, or perhaps most of them, were born at around the same time as Tuyo es el reino.” For the characters of these stories, the horizon is something more than a mere imaginary line - it is a place where the fears, hopes and desires of beings who wish to reach the infinite are contained. This is exactly what occurs in “Tosca”, for instance, where a remote night of operatic glory will forever change the life of a mediocre history professor. Or in “Regreso a Citerea” (“Return to Citerea”) and “Tres leyendas autobiográficas” (“Three Autobiographical Legends”), which describe the ultimate consequences of love. It is clear, then, why Estévez writes “man is equal to the sum of all the senses”.

“It is quite clear to me”, says Estévez with reference to El horizonte y otros regresos, “that writing a book of short stories does not help at all in writing a novel; however, in most cases these stories have helped to fill those moments of fatigue, fruitlessness and discouragement which the novel caused in me. In any case, the fundamental relation in all of these writings  is that they have been created by the same paradoxical person.”

Abilio Estévez was born in Havana in 1954 and currently lives in Barcelona. He has a degree in Hispanic Literature and Languages and also studied Philosophy in his native city. He has written two magnificent critically-acclaimed novels, Tuyo es el reino (Thine Is the Kingdom) -winner of the Cuban Critics Prize in 1999 and of the Best Foreign Book Award in France in 2000- and Los palacios distantes (The Distant Palaces) selected by the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia as the Book of the Year in 2004. Both novels have been translated into more than ten languages. He is also the author of a book of short stories, El horizonte y otros regresos (The Horizon and Other Ways Back) –Luis Cernuda Prize in 1986–, of the poetic prose Manual de tentaciones (Temptation Manual) –Cuban Critics Prize in 1987–, and of different plays, such as the monologues Ceremonias para actores desesperados (Ceremonies for Desperate Actors).