Description

Extravagantly stylish, searingly critical dispatches from the margins by a queer Latin American icon, in English for the first time

‘He speaks brilliantly for a difference that refuses to disappear’ Garth Greenwell

‘Astonishing and tender and quite outrageous… What a powerful, mould-breaking voice’ Tomasz Jedrowski

“I speak from my difference” wrote Pedro Lemebel, the Chilean writer who became an icon of resistance and queer transgression across Latin America. His innovative essays-known as cronicas-combine memoir, reportage, history and fiction to bring visibility and dignity to the lives of sexual minorities, the poor and the powerless.

In a baroque, freewheeling style that fused political urgency with playfulness, resistance with camp, Lemebel shone a light on lives and events that many wanted to suppress: the glitzy literary salon held above a torture chamber, the queer sex and community that bloomed in Santiago’s hidden corners and the last days of trans sex workers dying of AIDS, each cast in the starring role of her own private tragedy.

As Chile emerged from Pinochet’s brutal dictatorship into a flawed democracy, Lemebel re-wrote the country’s history from the margins, and today his subversive voice echoes around the world.

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‘When everyone who has treated him like dirt is lost in the cesspit or in nothingness, Pedro Lemebel will still be a star’ Roberto Bolano
‘Pedro Lemebel is alive! And I am in love’ Keith Ridgway
‘A truly astonishing body of work’ Lauren John Joseph
‘A truly sensational addition to our collective heritage’ Neil Bartlett

Publisher Review

‘Lemebel doesn’t have to write poetry to be the best poet of my generation… When everyone who has treated him like dirt is lost in the cesspit or in nothingness, Pedro Lemebel will still be a star’ – Roberto Bolano

‘He speaks brilliantly for a difference that refuses to disappear’ – Garth Greenwell

‘Lemebel’s critique of the western colonisation of sexual identity was almost as vicious as it was of the Pinochet dictatorship’ – Observer

‘Pedro Lemebel’s writing is a remarkable and radically uncompromising chronicle of queer life in anti-queer times. As such, its time is now. It is beautifully loyal to queer Santiago, queer Chile; to Chilean queers under the dictatorship, during the AIDS catastrophe, through the unrelenting poverty of neoliberalism. Such loyalty might exclude an anglophone reader. But Gwendolyn Harper’s translation is astoundingly good. It allowed me to feel that I was being spoken to directly. And to know that Lemebel’s personality, his poetry, his love, his grief, his anger, his generosity, his voice, are all still with us, and still true. Pedro Lemebel is alive! And I am in love’ – Keith Ridgway, author of ‘A Shock’

‘This book reminds me of Jean Genet, of the late great Juan Goytisolo – of everything that I love about truly queer writing. It shares their rage, their laughter, their fierceness and their courage. A truly sensational addition to our collective heritage’ – Neil Bartlett, author of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall