Translation Rights TQE / Games of the Late Age

The desires of an unsettled life immersed in an atmosphere of intellectual arguments and bohemia that Gregorio nourished during his youth disappear when, already mature, he becomes a simple clerk. One day he starts a phone relationship with Gil, a man of his age, ruined in a provincial life. Gil needs a hero – all the better if he is an artist – and he revives the old dreams of Gregorio and his desire to become a symbolic figure. The metamorphosis begins step by step. The hero that Gregorio develops, called Faroni, is all that either of them could be: a young winner, cultivated, handsome, sociable, an engineer and a poet, a musician, an explorer, polyglot, bold in love, progressive: a pathetic caricature of the artist according to our folkloric romanticism. Thus, Gregorio becomes an impostor. But when one day Gil announces his arrival, Gregorio makes a plan to throw him out of the city and return to the peace of his rather poor life. But it is too late. The invention exists by itself, and the imposture lives on its own: each character has different and contradictory personalities. Gregorio and Gil, as two adolescents who start dangerous plays at the late age, cannot live without the other. Both are losers, but over the ruins of their own failure they conform to a non-exitstent paradise where Faroni reigns as leader and prophet.

Juegos de la edad tardía (Games of the Late Age) has been one of the most important literary revelations of 1990. In very few occasions has the first novel by an unknown author received such warmly approving words. Luis Landero was awarded the National Prize for Narrative in 1990. He had already won the Critics’ Prize and the Icaro. Landero had writen a lot before showing this novel to Tusquets Editores, and he had thoroughly analyzed with which of his works and with which publishers to start on his way.

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.