Translation Rights TQE / Between the lines

Yes, you’ve read correctly:Luis Landero, who does not lavish excessively about his work, offers his passionate and loyal readers his fourth oeuvre, Entre líneas (Between the Lines), a beautiful book of reflection with an original structure made up of “recounted essays”, as Landero himself defines them, or essays in the form of stories held together by a likeable character, vaguely autobiographic, that seems to have emerged from one of his novels.

Manuel Pérez Aguado (Manolito to his friends, otherwise Don Manuel) is a literature professor, as well as a reader and writer.Manuel’s life, which has its ups and downs throughout the book, is pretty common:He was born in a small town where only two houses had electricity.Brought up on bible stories and legendary Hollywood, he lived the arrival of Coca-Cola and attended college in the capital, where he had to earn a living.However, nowdays, he has become a very peculiar figure:He is Someone Who Knows.In love with books, he reflects about fiction and reality.A lover of life, he meditates about his past and about a present full of contrasts that affects us all.

Landero, with his seductive prose to which we are accustomed, interweaves between the pages dedicated to Manuel Pérez Aguado, ideas, notes, and fragments that add another voice to the book:A voice that speaks in the first person narrative, that narrates other stories and that, one could say, almost ends up becoming another character.

Luis Landero was born in Alburquerque (Badajoz, Spain) in 1948. He has a degree in Spanish Language and Literature from the Complutense University. He has worked as a literature teacher in the School of Dramatic Arts in Madrid and has been a visiting professor of Yale University. His successful literary debut took place in 1989 with the novel Juegos de la edad tardía (Games of the Late Age, Critics Prize and National Narrative Prize in 1990), and it was followed by Caballeros de fortuna (The Fortunate Knights, 1994), El mágico aprendiz (The Magician’s Apprentice, 1998), El guitarrista (The Guitarist, 2002), and Hoy, Júpiter (Today, Jupiter, 2007). This novel won the XIV Arcebispo Juan de San Clemente Prize. Landero, who has been translated into several languages, is one of the most important Spanish narrators of the last decades and one of the brightest literary essayists. He is the author of Entre líneas: el cuento o la vida (Between the Lines: Story vs. Life, 2000), where he uses the short story to meditate on the art of fiction, and of ¿Cómo le corto el pelo, caballero? (How Shall I Cut Your Hair, Sir?, 2004), a compilation of his best articles.