Translation Rights TQE / The poor sorry sons of bitches

It is difficult to resist the emotion and acknowledgment regarding what occurs to the characters in the short stories that make up Los pobres desgraciados hijos de perra as one reads on. These stories are inhabited by adolescents who want to take in the whole world, and who possess an effervescent vitality that attracts them to the very edge of the abysm. But, as all stories do, these too have their downside. Years later, those young men become adults facing a society that is not as they imagined. The short stories form a unitary and rotund cosmos, whose main stage is a housing development in Portacoeli, a town where people spend their summers, but which gravitates around the “violent and confused youth” and its meaning with regard to passions, discoveries, liberty, and having time to do nothing at all; but also with regard to the first real deceptions and self-deceptions, the need to face death and drugs, and the permanent mark that the dreams of youth leave upon adults.

Carlos Marzal (Valencia, 1961) has a degree in Spanish Language and Literature from this city’s university. He is one of the most outstanding poets of his generation and his poetry volumes have been awarded the National Critics’ Prize and National Literature Prize (Metales pesados) and Loewe Foundation Prize (Fuera de mí). His last book of poems, Ánima mía, was voted best poetry book of 2009 by the cultural supplement El Cultural and has also received the Critics’ Prize in Valencia. He is the editor of the exquisite anthology Sentimiento del toreo (The sentiment of bullfighting, 2010). In 2003, Marzal also proved his skills as an excellent narrator with his novel Los reinos de la casualidad (Kingdoms of chance, 2003), praised by critics and readers alike.