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Book Title

One Out of Two

Subtitle
A Novel
Author 1
Daniel Sada; Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver
Body
The most distinctive thing about the Gamal sisters is that they are, essentially, indistinguishable (except for a modest mole). The twin spinsters spend their time trying to mask any perceptible differences they have while working hard at their thriving tailoring business in a small town in rural northern Mexico. When? Thirty years ago? Fifty years ago? Who can say—the world seems not to intrude on Ocampo over much.
 
Gloria and Constitución take an almost perverse delight in confusing people about which one is which. But then a suitor enters the picture, and one of the sisters decides that she doesn’t want to live a life without romance and all the good things that come with it. The ensuing competition between the sisters brings their relationship to the breaking point until they come up with an ingenious solution that carries this buoyant farce to its tender and even liberating conclusion.

Suffused with the tension between our desire for union and our desire for independence, One Out of Two is a giddy and comic fable by one of the giants of contemporary Latin American literature.

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List Price
$14.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-724-5
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
112
Trim Size
Trim Size
5 x 8
Keynote
"A literary titan of his time, one of the most innovative novelists in contemporary Latin American letters."—The Washington Post

About the Author

Daniel  Sada
Credit: Pascual Borzelli Iglesias
Daniel Sada was born in Mexicali, Mexico, in 1953, and died in 2011, in Mexico City. Considered by many as the boldest and most innovative writer in Spanish of his generation, he published eight volumes of short stories, nine novels, including One Out of Two, and three volumes of poetry. He was awarded numerous prizes including the Herralde Prize for Almost Never as well as Mexico’s most prestigious literary award, the National Prize for Arts and Sciences for Literature.
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Katherine Silver is an award-winning translator of Spanish and Latin American literature. Her recent translations include One Out of Two and Almost Never by Daniel Sada, and works by Martín Adán, Horacio Castellanos Moya, César Aira, and Marcos Giralt Torrente. She is the director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and lives in Berkeley, California.
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Praise

  • “[One Out of Two] is all the more intriguing for the way it follows a familiar template while doing something refreshingly new.”Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
  • “A poignant farce in which surreal touches are infused into seemingly everyday moments. . . . A delicious romp of a novel.”Pasatiempo
  • “[Sada’s] winding, lyrical, frequently abstract language is one of the great joys of this comical, silly and touching story. . . . A true pleasure.”—Shelf Awareness
  • “Whether you have a twin, know twins, wish you were a twin, or any other sibling desire or experience, this novel will both entertain and disconcert you.”World Literature Today
Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

A Lannan Translation Selection
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