Leslie Jamison News

The Gin Closet is appearing in serial form in a Mexican literary journal called Cuadrivio. Raul Aduna, one of the journal’s editors, did the translation. An excerpt is also set to appear in Estudios, a literary magazine out of ITAM, one of the big universities in Mexico City. I’m so grateful to Raul for putting so much effort into seeking out the book and translating it.

This is what Raul said in an English abstract preceding one of his translations:

“A collaborative work between writer and translator presents a poetic prose, characterized by the blending of lightness and gloom without establishing clear boundaries between each other, that until now was not available in our own language.”

You can check out the first installment (complete with photograph of arms emerging from closet) or see one fan’s response here.

The Gin Closet made it onto the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best of 2010.

It’s nestled next to Robert Stone’s Fun With Problems, a fitting bedfellow.

The book also got a thoughtful review at Giraffe Days, a wonderful book blog.

A preview:

“The Gin Closet…was written in a steady, quietly confident hand. Deceptively simple, there is some truly lovely prose here, unpretentious and dignified, which worked wonderfully with the subject matter…Perhaps it’s the frankness, the bald honesty, of the prose. The condensed life, the feeling of knowing how it ends and not being able to look away – of owing it to the character to stand by, like a witness. To somehow honour their life, if that makes sense…”