Sergio de la Pava – författare

The University of Chicago Press doesn't generally publish new American fiction. But last winter we started hearing from people we trusted about a stunning debut novel that no trade house had been willing to take a chance on-to the point that the author had given up and self-published it. We got a copy, and we were blown away. It's not hard to see why publishers would be scared off by this book: it's a 700-page first novel by a nobody with no connections. But what's a university press for if not to publish books we believe in that don't necessarily fit into the hit machine? And we believe in this book: it's an epoch-defining kind of novel, and the announcement of a once-in-a-generation kind of talent. "A Naked Singularity" is about Casi, a child of Colombian immigrants who lives in Brooklyn and works in Manhattan as a public defender - one who, tellingly, has never lost a trial. Never. In the book, we watch what happens when his sense of justice and even his sense of self begin to crack - and how his world then slowly devolves.It's a huge, ambitious novel clearly in the vein of DeLillo, Foster Wallace, Pynchon, and even Melville, and it's told in a distinct, frequently hilarious voice, with a striking human empathy at its center. Its panoramic reach takes readers through crime and courts, immigrant families and urban blight, media savagery and media satire, scatology and boxing, and even a breathless heist worthy of any crime novel. If "Infinite Jest" stuck a pin in the map of mid-90s culture and drew its trajectory from there, "A Naked Singularity" does the same for the feeling of surfeit, brokenness, and exhaustion that permeates our civic and cultural life today. In the opening sentence of William Gaddis' "A Frolic of His Own", a character sneers, "Justice? You get justice in the next world. In this world, you get the law." "A Naked Singularity" reveals the extent of that gap, and lands firmly on the side of those who are forever getting the law.

When we asked Sergio De La Pava about his aims as a writer, he said, "I want every novel I write to depart significantly into a new direction." With Personae, he's made good on that promise. Whereas De La Pava's debut, the critically acclaimed A Naked Singularity, was a shaggy, baggy monster of a book, Personae, nearly five hundred pages shorter, is lean and sharp. A Naked Singularity locked us into the unforgettable voice of its protagonist, Casi, while Personae shimmers and shifts - among different perspectives, locations, narrative techniques. Yet at the same time, the two novels are clearly the work of the same hand. The sheer energy of De La Pava's sentences, his eye for absurd humor, his commitment to the idea of justice - all will be familiar as they carry us from the tale of an obsessive, damaged psychic detective consumed by a murder case into a Sartrean drama that raises questions (and jokes) about responsibility, fate, death, and more. And when De La Pava eventually returns us to the investigation, this time seen from the other side, the lives and deaths bound up in it feel all the more real and moving, even as solid answers slip away into mist.A Naked Singularity was one of the most lauded debut novels in years. The Wall Street Journal named it one of the ten best novels of the year, and Shelf Awareness declared that it "heralded the arrival of a tremendous talent." In some ways, despite its brevity, Personae is even more surprising and challenging than A Naked Singularity - and, in its ambition and fierce intelligence, it's proof that Sergio De La Pava is here to stay. Despite extensive overtures from authors of trend pieces, Sergio De La Pava has not moved to Brooklyn.

"Ambitious, affecting, intelligent, plangent, comic, kooky and impassioned. I've read a lot of novels this year, between judging the Man Booker prize and the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, and I've yearned for this kind of exuberant, precise fiction" Stuart Kelly, Guardian on A Naked SingularityIt would take something huge to put Paterson, New Jersey on the map.But Nina Gill is determined to do just that. She is the daughter of the ageing owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the well-kept secret to their success. Shocked when her brother inherits the team, leaving her with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's only Indoor Football League franchise, she vows to take on the N.F.L. and make her new team the pigskin kings of America.Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles - a brilliant criminal mastermind - contrives to be thrown into Rikers Island prison to commit one of the most audacious crimes of all time. Now he's on the inside, he has two good reasons to get out. But how does a person of culture go about breaking out of the penal system when the whole of the land of the free is addicted to keeping him in it?Without knowing it, or ever having met, Nina and Nuno have already had a profound effect on each other's lives. As his bid for freedom and her bid for sporting immortality reach crisis point, their stories converge in the countdown to an epic conclusion. Thrilling, touching, insightful and shockingly hilarious, De La Pava's extraordinary novel gets under the skin and into the minds of a vast cast of characters from the fringes of society - immigrants, exiles and outsiders.

"Ambitious, affecting, intelligent, plangent, comic, kooky and impassioned. I've read a lot of novels this year, between judging the Man Booker prize and the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, and I've yearned for this kind of exuberant, precise fiction" Stuart Kelly, Guardian on A Naked SingularityIt would take something huge to put Paterson, New Jersey on the map.But Nina Gill is determined to do just that. She is the daughter of the ageing owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the well-kept secret to their success. Shocked when her brother inherits the team, leaving her with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's only Indoor Football League franchise, she vows to take on the N.F.L. and make her new team the pigskin kings of America.Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles - a brilliant criminal mastermind - contrives to be thrown into Rikers Island prison to commit one of the most audacious crimes of all time. Now he's on the inside, he has two good reasons to get out. But how does a person of culture go about breaking out of the penal system when the whole of the land of the free is addicted to keeping him in it?Without knowing it, or ever having met, Nina and Nuno have already had a profound effect on each other's lives. As his bid for freedom and her bid for sporting immortality reach crisis point, their stories converge in the countdown to an epic conclusion. Thrilling, touching, insightful and shockingly hilarious, De La Pava's extraordinary novel gets under the skin and into the minds of a vast cast of characters from the fringes of society - immigrants, exiles and outsiders.

"Ambitious, affecting, intelligent, plangent, comic, kooky and impassioned. I've read a lot of novels this year, between judging the Man Booker prize and the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, and I've yearned for this kind of exuberant, precise fiction" Stuart Kelly, Guardian on A Naked SingularityIt would take something huge to put Paterson, New Jersey on the map.But Nina Gill is determined to do just that. She is the daughter of the ageing owner of the Dallas Cowboys and the well-kept secret to their success. Shocked when her brother inherits the team, leaving her with the Paterson Pork, New Jersey's only Indoor Football League franchise, she vows to take on the N.F.L. and make her new team the pigskin kings of America.Meanwhile, Nuno DeAngeles - a brilliant criminal mastermind - contrives to be thrown into Rikers Island prison to commit one of the most audacious crimes of all time. Now he's on the inside, he has two good reasons to get out. But how does a person of culture go about breaking out of the penal system when the whole of the land of the free is addicted to keeping him in it?Without knowing it, or ever having met, Nina and Nuno have already had a profound effect on each other's lives. As his bid for freedom and her bid for sporting immortality reach crisis point, their stories converge in the countdown to an epic conclusion. Thrilling, touching, insightful and shockingly hilarious, De La Pava's extraordinary novel gets under the skin and into the minds of a vast cast of characters from the fringes of society - immigrants, exiles and outsiders.

From PEN Award­­–winning author Sergio de la Pava comes an existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman’s strange disappearance—which may be connected to one of the world’s most ruthless criminal organizations.Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find reprieve. Running away from an unspeakable event surrounding his ex Jane, Riv accidentally connects with his cousin Mauro and family friend Carlotta, who asks him to find her daughter Angelica Alfa-Ochoa. No sooner is Riv on the trail when it becomes clear that not only are the cops not looking for Angelica, but they are actively preventing him from finding her. This could be a good thing because the police are clearly in the pocket of one Exeter Mondragon, a name best never uttered in public if one wants to stay alive. But Riv is not one to leave things incomplete. When his investigation leads him straight into the heart of Mondragon’s criminal empire, he is forced not only to face unimaginable horrors, but also to plunge into the deepest and most perplexing conundrums of the human condition.Lightning fast on the page and steeped in the cultural history of Colombia, Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a novel only Sergio de la Pava could write. As incredibly funny as it is ridiculously smart, it poses large philosophical questions while keeping you laughing. A novel idea about the biggest idea of them all—what in God’s name are we even put on earth for, this book is a singular exploration of the human mind.

From PEN Award­­–winning author Sergio de la Pava comes an existential detective novel about a private investigator who flees New York City for Colombia after a personal tragedy and finds himself entangled in a young woman’s strange disappearance—which may be connected to one of the world’s most ruthless criminal organizations.Riv—poet, philosopher, private eye—arrives in Cali, Colombia, hoping to find reprieve. Running away from an unspeakable event surrounding his ex Jane, Riv accidentally connects with his cousin Mauro and family friend Carlotta, who asks him to find her daughter Angelica Alfa-Ochoa. No sooner is Riv on the trail when it becomes clear that not only are the cops not looking for Angelica, but they are actively preventing him from finding her. This could be a good thing because the police are clearly in the pocket of one Exeter Mondragon, a name best never uttered in public if one wants to stay alive. But Riv is not one to leave things incomplete. When his investigation leads him straight into the heart of Mondragon’s criminal empire, he is forced not only to face unimaginable horrors, but also to plunge into the deepest and most perplexing conundrums of the human condition.Lightning fast on the page and steeped in the cultural history of Colombia, Every Arc Bends Its Radian is a novel only Sergio de la Pava could write. As incredibly funny as it is ridiculously smart, it poses large philosophical questions while keeping you laughing. A novel idea about the biggest idea of them all—what in God’s name are we even put on earth for, this book is a singular exploration of the human mind.Praise for Every Arc Bends Its Radian:'De La Pava’s commitment to ideas — their creation and their interrogation — is so fervid that it lights up his prose. Riv wants to take us somewhere new, as intellectual strivers always want to, whether their stories are bound within a philosophical argument, a sweeping historical epic or a good old-fashioned detective yarn. It’s invigorating to be dropped in the middle of such an effort and to feel that whatever we might guess is coming next, the truth is likely to be much, much stranger.'—Dwyer Murphy, New York Times'This is the only book you’ll read this year (or any year?) in which a meeting with a supervillain leads to a five-page exegesis on the life and works of the third-century Saint Cyprian, 'the Magician.' This is a happy thing.'—Robert Rubsam, Washington Post'Between unctuous descriptions of Cali and its region, hilarious send-ups of noir tropes and more than a dash of speculative horror, de la Pava sticks a highly unlikely landing.'—LA Times

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.