The Touch System by Alejandra Costamagna, Lisa Dillman (translation) ISBN 9781945492501, 1945492503 instant download

The Touch System by Alejandra Costamagna, Lisa Dillman (translation) ISBN 9781945492501, 1945492503 instant download

"Readers will find themselves hoping for more of this bold writer's work."—Publishers WeeklyCat sitter, insomniac, former schoolteacher. Ania worries she is a "stand-in occupant," a substitute in her own life. When she receives a request from her father to visit her dying uncle Agustín in Argentina, she makes the long journey across the Andes from Chile to Campana, where her family immigrated from Italy. Her trip, one she used to make every summer with her father, will be an escape from the present & a journey to the borders of memory.What follows is an ambitious portrait of alienation and belonging, & of two families & countries separated by a range of mountains. Threaded together with encyclopedia entries, pages from an old immigrant manual, typing class exercises, passages from children's books, half-faded photos, & letters mailed between continents, The Touch System introduces Alejandra Costamagna as one of the most powerful...°°° Alejandra Costamagna was born in Chile to Argentine parents who had left their country in 1967 to escape the Onganía dictatorship. Whether the novel was inspired by autobiographical elements may be irrelevant; noteworthy, though, is how it conveys a sense of urgency to reconstruct a family’s past & understand one’s own place in the world. She has published three novels & one book of short stories, Malas noches (Bad Nights, 2000).  Lisa Dillman, an award-winning translator of many renowned Spanish American authors, masterfully renders the novel’s multiplicity of voices, giving full expression to the characters’ feelings of otherness, marginality, & even despair, through a narrative style infused with the same latent emotion we find in the Spanish-language original.Dillman teaches in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Emory University & has translated numerous works of fiction by Argentine, Mexican, Catalan, & Spanish writers.