RESCHEDULED: Presentation of 'The Others', with writer Raül Garrigasait and translator Tiago Miller
On the occasion of the launch of the English translation of Raül Garrigasait's novel The Others (Els estranys, Fum d'Estampa Press), the Instituto Cervantes in Manchester-Leeds will invite the Lleida born author and his translator Tiago Miller. They will be discussing different ideas, such as the creative process of writing the book, the challenges of translating it into English, the subjects dealt with directly and indirectly in the novel, their inspirations and references, etc. The conversation will be moderated by Kristina Pla, a lecturer at Durham University. At the end of the conversation there will be time for a Q&A with the audience.
Register for the free session in Zoom at this link
The Others is set in 1837, in the midst of the Carlist War. Rudolf von Wielemann, a young Prussian, crosses the Pyrenees to fight on the side of Order, but due to a misunderstanding he gets stuck in a bewildering city in ruins. In this place everything is turned upside down, transfigured or dislocated: friendship, family, religion, politics... With the passage of time, von Wielemann's astonishment increases, to the point these ruins become his continual companion and the only way left to see the world. With a style that touches all the registers between humour and tragedy, and alternating between the present and the past, the book takes us on a journey to the centre of the disturbing strangeness that each one of us carries within.
Raül Garrigasait (Solsona, 1979) is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and translator. His novel Els estranys won the Premi Llibreter and the Premi Òmnium in 2017. Garrigasait is a translator of Greek and German, and has brought characters like Plato and Goethe into the Catalan language. He is a Doctor in Classical Philology from the University of Barcelona, and also acts as director of La Casa dels Clàssics, a project that works to promote the creation and promotion of universal classics in the Catalan language.
Tiago Miller (London, 1987) is a writer and translator based in Lleida. He has worked on translations of various Catalan writers such as Pere Calders and Raül Garrigasait, and his articles on language, politics and literature have appeared in Núvol and La República. He is currently working on the first translation of a book by Monserrat Roig into English.
Kristina Pla is a Lecturer (Teaching) in Spanish at the Centre for Foreign Language Studies at Durham University. She holds a PhD in Spanish literature by the University of Manchester. Her research experience focusses on autofiction and literary criticism performed from within novels themselves, particularly in the works of Enrique Vila-Matas and Roberto Bolaño. She has taught Catalan and Spanish at several UK universities. She has also led cultural events at Instituto Cervantes Leeds, such as the Reading Club and the Writing Micro-Theatre Workshop.
