Affections - Tapa dura

"Beautifully translated by Sophie Hughes, Affections is a richly atmospheric and evocative portrait of fractured familial bonds that takes the reader into the darkness where the protagonists dwell." --The National (UK)

"With a direct, unvarnished style, harsh in some way, but with a great sense of rhythm, the author hooks the reader until the very ending of the novel, which is unexpected as much as suspended." --Marco Ostoni, La lettura - Corriere della Sera (Italy)

"In Affections, a family elegy is woven into an epitaph for the radical politics of South America and the result is an act of literary hypnosis you won't soon forget." --Adam Haslett, bestselling author of Imagine Me Gone

PRAISE FOR RODRIGO HASBUN:

"He is not a good writer, thank goodness. He is a great one." --Jonathan Safran Foer

"A short but powerful novel. . . rendered beautifully by translator Sophie Hughes." -Words Without Borders

"A slim, striking novel." --The New York Times Book Review

"A compact and evocative historical novel. . .Hasbun has crafted an intriguing tale that ably bridges a pair of indelible historical moments. Lots of novels plumb the intersection of the personal and the political, but few have this kind of intellectual helf and emotional subtlety." --World Literature in Review

PRAISE FOR AFFECTIONS:

"Dark, deep, disturbing. No concessions, no sweeteners: here everything hurts. Through this ably crafted family saga, Hasbún manages to explore the permanent conflicts and contradictions of a whole nation." --Andrés Neuman, author of Travel of the Century

"Concise yet wild, haunting yet exuberantly full of life, Rodrigo Hasbún's Affections achieves all sorts of artful, intoxicating contradictions. What a gloriously unpredictable book." --Idra Novey, author of Ways to Disappear

"A dark, stunning novel, Affections is charged by a brilliant kaleidoscope of perspectives, the voices of exiles, a post-war German family in Bolivia. Hasbún has spun a tale of displacement, of political turmoil, in which the characters' motives are as complicated as the Bolivian jungle they explore. It's a fascinating book." --Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy

A haunting novel about an unusual family’s breakdown—set in South America during the time of Che Guevara and inspired by the life of Third Reich cinematographer Hans Ertl—from the literary star Jonathan Safran Foer calls, “a great writer.”

Inspired by real events, Affections is the story of the eccentric, fascinating Ertl clan, headed by the egocentric and extraordinary Hans, once the cameraman for the Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Shortly after the end of World War II, Hans and his family flee to Bolivia to start over. There, the ever-restless Hans decides to embark on an expedition in search of the fabled lost Inca city of Paitití, enlisting two of his daughters to join him on his outlandish quest into the depths of the Amazon, with disastrous consequences.

Set against the backdrop of the both optimistic and violent 1950s and 1960s, Affections traces the Ertls’s slow and inevitable breakdown through the various erratic trajectories of each family member: Hans’s undertakings of colossal, foolhardy projects and his subsequent spectacular failures; his daughter Monika, heir to his adventurous spirit, who joins the Bolivian Marxist guerrillas and becomes known as “Che Guevara’s avenger”; and his wife and two younger sisters left to pick up the pieces in their wake. In this short but powerful work, Hasbún weaves a masterfully layered tale of how a family’s voyage of discovery ends up eroding the affections that once held it together.