Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

Product Information

Still Born, about two women grappling with whether or not to have children, was described by the judges as the “product of a deep wisdom” and “honest, unsentimental and compassionate about the choices we think we’re making, and the choices that are foisted upon us”. And Other Stories publishes some of the best in contemporary writing, including many translations. We aim to push people’s reading limits and help them discover authors of adventurous and inspiring writing.

Boulder: Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize

Through such intricate writing, in Julia Sanches’s voraciously readable translation, the author deftly manages to elevate the idea of a relationship to a force of nature, with the character of Boulder representing the struggle to reconcile a desire to be alone with a desire for company.’ Much of the novel is concerned with the relationship between Samsa and Boulder, and the changes that ensue when Samsa decides she would like a child. ‘She looks at me with those blue eyes that fade to gray in the warm apartment light, and I have the feeling she has everything, that she is one and whole, like a god. That, somehow, her desire for a child spoils her.’ With Boulder ambivalent towards children and parenting, Baltasar has written a subversion of motherhood – something we don’t often see depicted in literature or art. Does this feel like an accurate portrayal? If so, why do we not see more of this point of view? Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, who is also a film-maker, is translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim. It is a collection of stories about the lives of linked characters in a remote village in South Korea. The emptiness of solitude fills her life as if her existence takes dive in the hell of nothingness, she looks for solace in the company of other casual hook-ups, but nothing brings consolation to her soul. However, their daughter-Tinna stimulates a new sense of intimacy in her Boulder, intimacy which is strange and afresh, as if the flower may bloom again on the anew feeling of love and affection. Boulder finds herself amidst the soup of her fire of independence and the newly felt feeling of endearment, she has to churn the froth with her soul to decide the fate of her life. We meet our unnamed protagonist, loner content with moving from job to job, while she waits for a merchant freighter on the Chilean coast where she takes up the job as a cook, perfectly happy with the monotonous, predictable routine while traversing the South American coast. When she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian geologist, she trades in her itinerant lifestyle for a relatively more domestic arrangement in Reykjavik where Samsa gets a job.

Extraordinary books straight to your door.

La decisió anticipa un ésser que ja existeix i que ho colonitza tot. La seva presència té densitat, ocupa la casa amb tentacles definitius, s'enfonsa al crani dels seus habitants i s'arrapa al tel que els embolcalla el cervell. Boulder is a study and a chronicle of a relationship gone awry. Unfortunately, none of the conclusions sounds like a revelation, more like advice from women's magazines: poor communication leads to disaster; love is a neverending project which requires engagement, devotion and time from both partners; you have to be assertive in the relationship because sacrificing your own needs leads to frustration. From the very beginning, it is obvious that despite physical dominance, it is not Boulder who sets the rules here but Samsa: She doesn’t like my name, and gives me a new one. Then more demands follow with no consideration of what Boulder thinks/wants/needs. These conclusions are never told expressis verbis, they are veiled in poetical prose but hover in the air. Boulder, a story about queer love and motherhood, was described by the judges as a “very intense, poetic, sensual book about all kinds of appetites”.

Eva Baltasar: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize Eva Baltasar: Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize

Earlier this year, I read Guadalupe Nettel’s Still Born and that book was two friends. One dislikes children, while the other wants them. Eventually both women experience motherhood or love for a child.I can give anything up,’ the narrator tells us at the start of the novella, ‘ because nothing is essential when you refuse to imprison life in a narrative.’ She goes from job to job winding up a cook aboard a merchant ship, happy in her singularity besides an occasional lover at the various ports around Chile. Until she meets Samsa, a Scandinavian woman with whom ‘ satisfying her is like settling a blood debt,’ and when a new job for Samsa would separate them forever, she follows into a domestic life in Reykjavik. However, is it anchoring to love or merely blown about on the tides of desire? ‘ No emotion is more indulgent than feeling that you are intensely human,’ she thinks, ‘ though it can also be the most tyrannical,’ and it is precisely her whims and ‘humanness’ that makes her such an engaging and lively character. Permagel', d'Eva Baltasar: crònica d'un triomf editorial (Jordi Nopca)". llegim.ara.cat. June 27, 2018 . Retrieved February 3, 2019. This book spoke to my battered gay heart and also there's a sentence where she describes someone's nose as being “tight as a gymnast's ass” and I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.’ Luis Correa

Boulder - Libro de Eva Baltasar: reseña, resumen y opiniones Boulder - Libro de Eva Baltasar: reseña, resumen y opiniones

The novel is written entirely in the first person and is made up of short sections, yet also lengthy monologues. Did this point of view and style enhance your connection with or understanding of the protagonist? Cohabitation: “Life tears open like a wound that rots and bubbles. If anyone talks to me about happiness, I swear to God I’ll break their face” (17). Eva Baltasar debuts as a novelist with a high voltage book about the self, the body, sex and the family. One of the books of the year.’Boulder est la deuxième publication d'un triptyque sur 3 femmes différentes qui doivent affronter les contradictions de leur temps. Boulder a été précédé par Permafrost en 2018 et sera suivi cette année par Mamut. While immersing myself into Boulder’s world, I realized that the prose was full of metaphors, similes and other figures of speech - usually I find this kind of writing quite underwhelming. Yet, after getting to know the narrator slightly better, I felt it wasn’t completely incongruous with her peculiar and detached, but deeply poetic worldview. Boulder’s raw vocabulary is her second nature, there is something addictive about her voice. An abundant marine imagery with its sea, ships and sailors hints at the bigger picture which is to take place in this novel. Reading Eva Baltasar's Permafrost is like having a rug continuously pulled out from under you until finally the rug disappears. How can a novel that orbits suicide be so surprising, so intensely liberating and funny, and at the same time, so full of grief? That is its genius. Catherine Lacey Boulder is Julia Sanches’s translation of Eva Baltasar’s Catalan original of the same name, and the second in a triptych (rather than a trilogy) of novels, the third part of which Mamut was published in 2022 in the original and presumably will be out in English in 2023-.

Boulder by Eva Baltasar - Publishers Weekly Boulder by Eva Baltasar - Publishers Weekly

Eva Baltasar: "Per a mi la poesia és una de les moltes formes que pren l'amor" – L'estenedor". antoniriera.wordpress.com. February 4, 2014 . Retrieved February 3, 2019.

Biography

Setting the story in Iceland added to its atmosphere of nordic depression and must have been meant as a metaphor. The writer Eva Baltasar is known primarily as a poet, although this is the 2nd of a triptych of novels, preceded by Permagel (2018) (translated into English as Permafrost (2018)) and followed by Mamut (2022) (not yet translated into English). Recuperam els premis Mallorca perquè els hem deixat perdre". arabalears.cat. October 22, 2016 . Retrieved February 3, 2019.