Мексиканская повесть, 80-е годы

The debut work in English by Mexico's greatest and most influential living author and winner of the Cervantes Prize ("the Spanish language Nobel"), The Art of Flight takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the world's cultural capitals as Sergio Pitol looks back on his well-traveled life as a legendary author, translator, scholar, and diplomat.

The first work in Pitol's "Trilogy of Memory," The Art of Flight imaginatively blends the genres of fiction and memoir in a Borgesian swirl of contemplation and mystery, expanding our understanding and appreciation of what literature can be and what it can do.

Sí, en efecto, Sergio Pitol ha vuelto a recorrer algunos de sus territorios que suponíamos había perdido. En esta aparición nos confía algunos trozos de sus diarios de viaje. Concretamente uno que va de Praga al Cáucaso, a Tiflis, la capital de Georgia, pasando por Moscú y por la ciudad que entonces se llamaba Leningrado, en un aparente despertar de primavera.

"Sergio Pitol is not only our best active storyteller, he is also the bravest renovator of our literature." — Álvaro Enrigue,

Pitol is unfathomable; it could almost be said that he is a literature entire of himself." — Daniel Saldaña Paris, author of

"Pitol is probably one of Mexico's most culturally complex and composite writers. He is certainly the strangest, most unfathomable, and eccentric. . [His] voice. . reverberates beyond the margins of his books." — Valeria Luiselli, author of

"Reading him, one has the impression. . of being before the greatest writer in the Spanish language in our time." — Enrique Vila-Matas

The Journey

This adventurous story, based on the author's own travel journals, parades through some of the territories that the author lived in and traveled through (Prague, the Caucasus, Moscow, Leningrad) as he reflects on the impact of Russia's sacred literary pantheon in his life and the power that literature holds over us all.

The Journey

Sergio Pitol, la realidad de escenarios y la influencia de las literaturas no le han impedido a Sergio Pitol la creación de un mundo auténtico. El incendio que amenaza a cada uno de los personajes y el cerco de palabras que no ofrece resquicios pertenecen a un escritor profundamente singular. Al renunciar a escribir en la bitácora del extranjero, Sergio Pitol se ha vuelto nativo de su propio mundo, un mundo tan intenso y rico en cambios y matices como el más vigoroso de los elementos, el fuego.