Skip to main content
Displaying 1 of 1
Seeing Red
Click for more information  Ebook
2016
Availability
Annotations

"Seeing Red describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke which leaves her blind. It charts her journey through hospitals and an increased dependency on those closest to her to cope. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, science, and human relationships."--Publisher's website. - (Baker & Taylor)

A visceral, moving, haunting English-language debut on illness, the body, and human relationships by one of Chile's brightest young authors
- (Lightning Source, Inc. Ebooks)

"Meruane's prose has great literary force: it emerges from the hammer blows of conscience, but also from the ungraspable, and from pain."—Roberto Bolaño

This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.

Lina Meruane (b. 1970), considered the best woman author of Chile today, has won numerous prestigious international prizes, and lives in New York, where she teaches at NYU.

- (Lightning Source, Inc. Ebooks)

"Meruane's prose has great literary force: it emerges from the hammer blows of conscience, but also from the ungraspable, and from pain."—Roberto Bolaño

This powerful, profound autobiographical novel describes a young Chilean writer recently relocated to New York for doctoral work who suffers a stroke, leaving her blind and increasingly dependent on those closest to her. Fiction and autobiography intertwine in an intense, visceral, and caustic novel about the relation between the body, illness, science, and human relationships.

Lina Meruane (b. 1970), considered the best woman author of Chile today, has won numerous prestigious international prizes, and lives in New York, where she teaches at NYU.

- (Perseus Publishing)

Author Biography

Lina Meruane is one of the most prominent female voices in Chilean contemporary narrative. A novelist, essayist, and cultural journalist, she is the author of a host of short stories appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Spanish, English, German and French. She has also published a collection of short stories, Las Infantas (Chile 1998, Argentina 2010),as well as three novels, Póstuma (Chile 2000, Portugal 2001), Cercada (Chile 2000) and Fruta Podrida (Chile & México 2007). The latter won the Best Unpublished Novel Priza awarded by Chile´s National Council of the Culture and the Arts in 2006. She is the winner of the Anna Seghers Prize, awarded to her by the Akademie der Künste, in Berlin, Germany, 2011. Meruane received the prestigious Mexican Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 2012 with the publication of her most recent novel, Sangre en el ojo (Seeing Red).
Meruane has received writing grants from the Arts Development Fund of Chile (1997), the Guggenheim Foundation (2004) and National Endowment for the Arts (2010). Meruane is a cultural journalist, columnist and stringer for written media, and currently serves as editor of Brutas Editoras, an independent publishing house located in New York City. Holder of a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature from New York University, Meruane currently teaches World and Latin American Literature and Creative Writing at NYU.

Megan McDowell is a literary translator of many modern and contemporary South American authors, including Alejandro Zambra, Arturo Fontaine, Carlos Busqued, Álvaro Bisama, and Juan Emar. Her translations have been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders, Mandorla, and Vice, among others. She lives in Santiago, Chile and New York.
- (Lightning Source, Inc. Ebooks)

Large Cover Image
Trade Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A female writer who is losing her sight probes the meaning of language, genre, and the reader's expectations. This intriguing short novel by Chilean writer Meruane is her first to be translated into English. It won Mexico's prestigious Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 2012. Meruane, who teaches at New York University, tells the traumatic story of Lucina, a Chilean writer also living in New York. The 60ish short, un-capitalized chapters are simply titled: "burst," "that face," "sleepwalker," etc. Blending fiction and autobiography, the narrator and Meruane both suffer from diabetes, which can cause a hemorrhagic stroke affecting the eyes. The story is fairly simple, the telling intricate. While enjoying herself at a party, Lucina suddenly experiences a "firecracker" going off in her head. Blood begins spilling forth in her eye, the "most shockingly beautiful blood I have ever seen." It's both outrageous and terrifying and only she can see it. Her other eye is also affec ted; she's virtually blind. Lucina and her partner, Ignacio, are in the midst of a move to a new apartment. She now needs help to get around, to relearn the "geography of things." When she's finally able to get an appointment with her doctor, he tells her it may not clear up. She travels to Santiago to visit family and refuses to see a doctor there. She thinks about her country as being ill, too. Back in New York, she's told her eye is still bad and may never heal: "Don't move doctor, I whispered. Wait for me here, and I'll bring you a fresh eye." Throughout, Lucina (and Meruane) meditates upon illness and its relationship with the process of writing and going blind. Meruane, whom Roberto Bolaño called one of the "greats in the new generation of Chilean writers," fashions a challenging metafiction that ventures into fresh and provocative places. Copyright Kirkus 2015 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

Blurring the lines between fiction and memoir, Meruane's first novel translated into English explores mortality, identity, and personal transformation. Lina, a fictionalized version of the author, experiences a severe ocular hemorrhaging that impairs her sight. The dark blood clouding Lina's eyes makes it difficult for her to move around her New York City apartment or navigate the busy streets alone. She must rely heavily on her lover, Ignacio. While trying to accept the possibility that she might be blind permanently, Lina and Ignacio visit her family in Santiago, Chile. The trip home prompts Lina to examine the limitations of her ailing body, the future of her writing and doctorate studies, and the effect her illness has on those around her. As Lina's condition worsens and she faces surgery, the strength of her relationship with Ignacio is tested. The book is composed of short scenes with titles, much like flash fiction. These brief glimpses into Lina's life accumulate to depict a woman trying her best to hold on to a sense of self as her world disappears from sight. McDowell's translation emboldens the intensity and lyricism of Meruane's visceral prose, littered with sensory details and savory descriptions of the smells and sounds surrounding Lina as her vision fails. This is a penetrating autobiographical novel, and for English-Language readers this work serves as a stunning introduction to a remarkable author. (Feb.)

[Page ]. Copyright 2015 PWxyz LLC

Librarian's View
Displaying 1 of 1