Search results for ""Author Jen Calleja""

A novelist questions why she’s been shortlisted for the Prize of Prize’s Prize; an artist duo has a messy break up; a schoolgirl is saved from a predator by a flash flood and a gang of dead animals; a surgeon has an incurable identity crisis; a budding actor can’t see what’s so funny; a pregnant food writer gets a craving for luxury consumerism.These thirteen stories by writer and literary translator Jen Calleja pick apart the hidden motivations behind our desires, and the ways we seek out distraction from difficult truths. They investigate histories, power dynamics, rituals, institutions – the roles we adopt, as well as the ones we inherit. Known for her acclaimed poetry and translations, and as a performer in numerous bands, these facets manifest in an attention to the latent ambivalence of language, and the nature of storytelling itself. This writing is direct and considered – it asks to be read, read out loud, retold, refashioned into fables with a distinctive mouthfeel.I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For is a sharp, bold, inventive and prescient fictional debut from a versatile and brilliant writer.

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2022 edition of the UEA MA Translation creative writing course anthology

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In a time when looking into the past has become a socially unacceptable and illegal act in the Nation, a group of scholars are offered an attractive residency to allow them to pursue their projects. When the residency transpires to be a devastating trick, these Researchers go on the run, and soon discover that their projects all relate to one major event: the Isletese Disaster – the decline and subsequent devastation fifty years earlier of a long-forgotten roaming archipelago called The Islets.One figure emerges as central to all of their work: Hester Heller, a reformed cult musiker turned student recruited from the Institute for Transmission as an agent of the state and tasked with gathering reconnaissance on the Disaster by using her old band Vehicle as a cover. Heller is the key to the Researchers collective story, which they try to piece together while evading their pursuers.Compiled from the Researchers’ disparate documentation, recollections, and even their imaginations, Vehicle is a timely and daring exploration of xenophobia, exploitation, the writing of histories and legacies, and the politics of translation.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2019 AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER When Gilbert wakes one day from a dream that his wife has cheated on him, he flees - immediately and inexplicably - for Tokyo, where he meets a fellow lost soul: Yosa, a young Japanese student clutching a copy of The Complete Manual of Suicide. Together, Gilbert and Yosa set off on a pilgrimage to see the pine islands of Matsushima, one looking for the perfect end to his life, the other for a fresh start. Playful and profound, The Pine Islands is a beautiful tale of friendship, transformation and acceptance in modern Japan.

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Dust Sucker is a remarkable new book-length poem by writer and translator Jen Calleja. Clear-eyed, expansive, and intoxicating, this exhilarating work deftly blurs disparate themes including time and mortality, communication and translation, intimacy and infertility. Presented as a deluxe bilingual bookwork, this 'contemplation of dust' explores the pollution of our environment - both at home and in nature - and the shoring of mental detritus. With unquestionable poignancy and flashes of sardonic wit, Calleja excavates her English-Irish-Maltese heritage, inherited anxieties, and ambivalence towards childlessness during climate crisis. Ultimately, Dust Sucker is triumphant proof that even when feeling dusty with despair, there exists a compulsion to find other means to traverse and communicate experience. This edition includes a German translation by award-winning Austrian poet Carolina Schutti; a companionable doppelganger befitting of a poem that finds connection across languages and in translation.

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When her parents die in a car accident, highly talented Austrian physicist Ruth Schwarz is confronted with a problem. Her parents’ will calls for them to be buried in their childhood home — but for strangers, the village of Gross-Einland remains stubbornly hidden from view. When Ruth finally finds her way there, she makes a disturbing discovery: beneath the town lies a vast cavern that exerts a strange control over the lives of the villagers. There are hidden clues about the hole everywhere, but nobody wants to talk about it — not even when it becomes clear that the stability of the entire town is in jeopardy. In the literary tradition of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Raphaela Edelbauer’s tale of trauma and history weaves an opaque dream fabric that is frighteningly true to life, and in the process she turns us towards the abject horror that lies beneath repressed memory. The Liquid Land is a dangerous novel, at once glittering nightmare and dark reality, from an extraordinary new voice.

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