Translation Rights TQE / An ordered life

Humiliated by Lisa in a family celebration, Enrique goes out for a while: he longs in vain to escape from a dull life which repeatedly shows him that he is not master of even his house… but when he realizes that he has forgotten his keys and gets back to the house, he will learn some dramatic news from which he will take a malicious profit.

When he leaves prison, Ricardo visits an apartment his mother has bequeathed to him, though he promised himself not to live in it until a jail mate would be freed. However, Mercedes, the dumb maid, shows him that she’s found rats in the place. Ricardo suspects that somebody, with dubious intentions, is bringing them on purpose, and while he looks for a photograph in the asylum where his mother has died and unfolds her strange last will, he will discover intriguing secrets in the correspondence that she sent to him in jail.

It is these sick travellers that step out of certainty, regardless of their own wishes, as well as of reverence to stability to the fixed home.  They are victims of lure in search of an object or of a past that will redeem them, but that in reality consists of an unrecoverable order.

The unanimous critical acknowledgement of the work of Fabio Morábito (Alexandria, Egypt, 1955), comes from his very first poetry book and was confirmed by the volume of short stories, La lenta furia (Slow Fury) 1989, translated into German in 1998 and praised by José de la Colina as «the greatest revelation of the genre» at the moment in Mexico.  Narrator, essayist, poet, and translator of a number of works, Fabio Morábito lived in Milan during the fist years of his life.  At the age of 14 he left for Mexico, where he has lived since 1969.  His first books of poetry stand out, Lotes baldíos (Empty Lots) Carlos Pellicer Prize, 1985, De lunes todo el año (Monday the Whole Year) Aguascalientes Prize, 1992.  He has also written two children’s books, of which Cuando las panteras no eran negras (When Panthers Were Not Black) 1996, received the international distinction «White Raven» from the Jüngen Bibliotheke in Munich.  In narrative he has written Caja de herramientas (Tool Box) 1989, which was translated in Germany, United Kingdom, and the Unites States.  In another field of his writing Los pastores sin ovejas (Shepherds Without Sheep) 1995, deals with the persistence of the bucolic archetype both in literature and in political deliriums such as Nazism.