Today’s GalleyCrush is João Gilberto Noll’s Harmada, translated from the Portuguese by Edgar Garbelotto, forthcoming from Two Lines Press on November 10, 2020.
Perfect pitch: A mythic tale of art and displacement nimbly translated from Portuguese by Edgar Garbelotto, Harmada serves as yet another reminder of João Gilberto Noll’s sublime literary power: generous in its mystery; earthbound in its essential urges; and entirely unpredictable.
First lines: “Nobody sees me here. I can lie down on the ground at last, and delight in the earth that has turned to mud after the storm.”
Book notes: Paperback, fiction, 168 pages.
Author bio: João Gilberto Noll (1946–2017) was the author of nearly twenty books. His work appeared in Brazil’s leading periodicals, and he was a guest of the Rockefeller Foundation, King’s College London, and the University of California in Berkeley, as well as a Guggenheim fellow. A five-time recipient of the Prêmio Jabuti, and the recipient of more than ten awards in all, he died in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the age of seventy.
Translator bio: Edgar Garbelotto is a writer and translator born in Brazil and based in the United States for the past twenty years. His translation of João Gilberto Noll’s novel Lord was published by Two Lines Press in 2019. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Asymptote, Ninth Letter, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Terra Incognita, written in both Portuguese and English, is his debut novel.
