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Following up on my last post, it’s a pleasure to announce that the first selection is Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Tyrant Memory, which is translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver and available later this month from New Directions.

I’ve been a fan of Horacio’s ever since I read Senselessness, an absolutely stunning book about a man hired to edit a 1,100-page report of the atrocities committed by the military against the indigenous population. It’s haunting and beautiful and tight and paranoid. (See this review for more detailed info.)

Since that time, Biblioasis published his novel Dance with Snakes and New Directions did She-Devil in the Mirror. Although Senseless still stands supreme in my mind, both of those books are extremely interesting and cemented Horacio’s reputation as one of today’s most exciting and talented authors.

So when we decided to create it seemed absolutely perfect to kick things off with Horacio’s new book, Tyrant Memory. This novel is a bit different than the others that have come out in English translation, mostly because it features three different narrators and styles. (The other three books are all first-person narratives.) It’s a “bigger” book in some senses, seeing that it deals with the coup and strike that lead to the overthrow of the Warlock, in 1944.

Here’s New Direction’s jacket copy:

The tyrant of Horacio Castellanos MoyaÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s ambitious new novel is the actual pro-Nazi mystic Maximiliano Hernández Martínez ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½” known as the Warlock ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½” who came to power in El Salvador in 1932. An attempted coup in April, 1944, failed, but a general strike in May finally forced him out of office. Tyrant Memory takes place during the month between the coup and the strike. Its protagonist, Haydée Aragon, is a well-off woman, whose husband is a political prisoner and whose son, Clemente, after prematurely announcing the dictatorÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s death over national radio during the failed coup, is forced to flee when the very much alive Warlock starts to ruthlessly hunt down his enemies. The novel moves between HaydéeÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s political awakening in diary entries and ClementeÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s frantic and often hysterically comic efforts to escape capture. Tyrant Memory ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½” sharp, grotesque, moving, and often hilariously funny ÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½” is an unforgettable incarnation of a countryÌÇÐÄ´«Ã½™s history in the destiny of one family.

You can access the online preview of Tyrant Memory by and you can purchase the book from and at those links.

Enjoy!