Byobu

"the best book of 2021 just arrived. Search no further. All the other contenders tapped out while this masterpiece was being completed." ―ABC Cultural

"Vitale’s prose is drop dead gorgeous and Byobu an enchanting mix of the wise, the ruminative, and the poetic." ―Jeremy Garber, Powell's Bookshop

"A fascinating glimpse into the poet’s intricate world." ―Morning Star

"Extraordinary... giving due attention to Vitale’s prose will bring you reassurance and optimism" ―Lunate

**********
Praise for Ida Vitale

• Winner of Miguel de Cervantes Prize (2018).
• Named by BBC as one of the 100 most influential women of 2019.
• Winner of Reina Sofía Prize for Latin American Poetry (2015).

‘In Byobu, the veteran Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale gives us a holy fool for the twenty-first century. The responses of her childish everyman to the contemporary life she’s constructed for him are puzzled yet direct, wry yet fresh. A series of exquisitely rendered vignettes see him struggle, existentially alone, to make sense of park life, insomnia, or a conference roundtable. But behind the humour and pathos rumbles the entire western philosophical tradition. This complex late masterpiece, published when Vitale was 95, offers plenty of questions but – of course – no answers.’Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL

‘An alchemical abecedary in which the ever-insubordinate imagination of Ida Vitale fashions delicate miniatures, origami animals, to a rebellious horology set by tourbillon. The eye as instrument coalesces words into a double play: classical forms and experimentation, contradictio in adiecto, the paradox of language paints the colored screen, biombo, byobú, between ourselves and the mystery. Odilon Redon, Queneau and Calvino meet Voltaire in the hands of master watchmaker Vitale who whispers: linear time is but an illusion.’Valerie Miles

‘Byobu offers a journey both mysterious and epiphanic. Signposted by exquisite vocabulary and writing that is not simple, where each word possesses its own weight and music’** Babelia**

‘Ida Vitale is a woman of almost legendary courage. Due to her long and intense life, she has become an exceptional witness of Latin America and its literature.’** Salient Women**

‘Ida Vitale’s writing succeeds like few others in encountering that harmonious figure (…) hidden and woven between the hurtful protrusions of reality, among the amorphous noise of chaos.’** El País**

Ida Vitale (Uruguay, 1923) is a poet, translator, essayist, and literary critic. In 2018, she was just the fifth woman to receive the prestigious Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the highest recognition for literature in Spanish. In addition to the Cervantes Prize, she has also received the FIL Literature Prize (2018), Max Jacob Prize (2017), Federico García Lorca Poetry Prize (2016), Reina Sofía Poetry Prize (2015), Alfonse Reyes Prize (2014), and Octavio Paz Prize (2009), as well as many other honours, including being named by the BBC as one of the 100 most influential women of 2019.

Sean Manning is a literary translator and a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. He has translated numerous literary texts including Spanish poet Azahara Palomeque’s _American Poems _(Coolgrove Press, 2020), Puerto Rican writer Eduardo Lalo’s The Elements, Uruguayan philosopher Carlos Pereda’s _Lessons in Exile _(Brill, 2018), and the work of Cuban writers Lorenzo García Vega and Ana Luz García. He is currently working on Carlos Pereda’s most recent book Destructions and Nomadic Thought; book-length works by Diego Vecchio and Lorenzo García Vega; and various texts by Ricardo Piglia, Ana Camblong, and Daniel Attala for a volume dedicated to the work of Argentine writer Macedonio Fernández.