Congratulations to Tom Gatehouse for winning a #PENTranslates award from English PEN to translate Bernardo Kucinski’s part political essay, part ghost story The Congress of the Disappeared from the Portuguese into English.
This novella rescues the victims of state violence from historical oblivion and settles accounts with those responsible for political torture and disappearance, with wit, heart, and imagination. Here at Latin America Bureau we’re delighted to publish this book, from the same author who brought you The Past is an Imperfect Tense and K.
Kucinski, a journalist and university professor in São Paulo, lost his sister in the Brazilian military misrule in 1973, while he was a student in England.
LAB author and Congress of the Disappeared translator Tom Gatehouse says, on winning the award:
The Congress of the Disappeared traces a line from the state violence of the present and the recent past (particularly the dictatorship period in Brazil), all the way back to the genocide and slavery that underpinned Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in Latin America. It’s a powerful call to action, demanding that we rescue these victims (many of them nameless) from historical oblivion, and settle accounts with the perpetrators.
At LAB we were struck by the ambition and originality of this work, and I personally am thrilled to have the chance to translate it and bring it to an English-speaking readership.
What others have said about the book:
Giving the disappeared a voice is one way of confronting the traumas of our history. The dictatorship would not give up the bodies of the tortured young people – some of whom had been cut into pieces – to their families, so they could be buried. The Congress of the Disappeared represents the battle of memory against forgetting…
– Abrao Slavutzky
A powerful novel by an author who lost a sister to the Brazilian dictatorship – she, also, was one of those disappeared.
– Henrique Wagner
Literature is art and art moves people. You might convince someone with a rational argument, but you’re unlikely to move them. Because art goes beyond reason and plays on the emotions, it has been so important throughout history in the sense of informing people and mobilising them against the excesses and the evils of humanity.
– Bernardo Kucinski
As well as recovering historical figures and anonymous victims of the bloodthirsty rage of the repressive apparatus, the writer confidently describes the macabre, locating each new massacre in the parade of horrors which has been in place ever since colonial times. His use of black humour is essential for describing the scale of the tragedy. A good antidote to the cheap hatred of the social networks and the disgraceful treatment of these issues by the far right.
– Bia Abramo
See the full list of awarded translations in this PENTranslates flagship translation award round, including books from Cameroon and Singapore, and works translated from Greenlandic and Kannada.
View our full catalogue and purchase LAB books here.