Maniobras de evasión
Pedro Mairal
ESSAYS | 2015 | 272 pages
EDITED BY LEILA GUERRIERO
What does an author do when he isn’t writing? What does an author do when he’s hungover, or when a splendid woman asks him to get a drink at a literary cocktail party, or while he watches his son sleep, or when he’s alone in a hotel room? How does the combination of a bus accident, a cheesy movie, and a literary prize transform an unknown poet into a writer who is recognized in the streets? How does the urge to write emerge in an author, and how unwavering is it really?
When Leila Guerriero was charged with editing an anthology of texts Pedro Mairal had published on various platforms, she was merciless. She discounted several of them and paid no attention to the author’s pleas, she made him write new texts to dig deeper into certain themes he had only hinted at before, and she was able to organize and piece things together perfectly. Maniobras de evasión is the result of all this work. It is not an anthology, but an authentic and involuntary autobiography in which the author, in Guerriero’s words “traverses a territory that would leave others feeling unsettled without holding back: the behind the scenes of the writing process, which is sort of like the behind the scenes of life. An astounding and elegant snapshot of the other side of an author, and the clearest application of writing as a mode of survival.”
RIGHTS: spanish (argentina & uruguay) PLANETA | spanish (spain) LIBROS DEL ASTEROIDE | spanish (chile) UDP | spanish audio STORYTEL
“In this ‘autobiography,’ there are texts that justify what Guerriero tells me: ‘Pedro is one of the best contemporary authors from Argentina.’”
“Distanced from the literary super-ego, Maniobras de evasión is an intense, emotional, and warm book composed of a series of tales that fall between personal diaries and chronicles and wash away the idea that humor makes an author’s work less serious, when in reality more intelligence goes into making others laugh than into demonstrating, for example, human drama.”
BY PEDRO MAIRAL:
Esta historia ya no está disponible
ESSAYS, 2022
El gran surubí
NOVEL, 2012/2021
Breves amores eternos
SHORT STORIES, 2019
La uruguaya
NOVEL, 2016
Maniobras de evasión
ESSAYS, 2015
El subrayador
ESSAYS, 2014
El equilibrio
ESSAYS, 2013
Salvatierra
NOVEL, 2008
El año del desierto
NOVEL, 2005
Consumido final
POETRY, 2003
Hoy temprano
SHORT STORIES, 2001
Una noche con Sabrina Love
NOVEL, 1998
Tigre como los pájaros
POETRY, 1996