The She-Devil in the Mirror Pubbing in September

It took me scarcely 24 hours to race through New Directions' forthcoming Horacio Castellanos Moya, The She-Devil in the Mirror (available September). I'm going to have to take a slower second look at this one to determine if I like it more than Senselessness, but it's definitely in the running.

Whereas Senselessness was about a paranoid intellectual of extremely modest means in Guatemala, She-Devil is about a paranoid upper-class airhead living in El Salvador. Both books are narrated in first-person reminiscent of stream-of-consciousness, although the voices are quite distinct (Senselessness's narrator was given to long tirade-like rambles, where She-Devil's narrator likes to talk in clipped little remarks.) The obvious links between the two books are political murder, paranoia, and a certain kind of mordant humor where Moya encourages us to laugh at his absurd narrators.

There's yet another Moya publishing in September, this from the publisher Biblioasis. It's called Dances with Snakes, and the Spanish-language press on this one is generally encouraging.

I believe New Directions also has another one slated for 2010, which would put almost 1/3 of Moya's book-length fiction into English translation. This is encouraging news, since from what I've seen Moya's the real deal.

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