International Literature Book Club

On Monday, March 6th, at 7 p.m., join the International Literature Book Group, led by Sarah McNally. We will discuss Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer.

Sudden Death by Alvaro Enrigue

The riotous impurity of his intellectual forays has already made him one of Mexico’s most garlanded writers (“Sudden Death” won the Herralde Prize in 2013). It builds a scrapbook of disparate elements that combines the cheeky freedom of Roberto Bolaño with the narrative telescopings of Mario Vargas Llosa, gradually overlapping to form a shimmer of suggestions about happenstance and the creative imagination. -- Lorna Scott Fox, The Washington Post

Enrique's approach has "great entertainment value and intellectual appeal, especially as a corrective to a Eurocentric view of history." -- Larry Rohter, The New York Times Review of Books

In no particular order, “Sudden Death” concerns: the tale of four tennis balls made from the hair of a beheaded Anne Boleyn; a fictional tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo; Cortés’s conquest of Mexico; and the history of various ball games. -- Nicholas Casey, The New York Times Book Review