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Fabio Morábito

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Books by this author: Invisible Dog
  • About
  • Reviews
  • Fabio Morábito was born to Italian parents in Alexandria in 1955 and has lived in Mexico City since the age of fifteen. He has published five collections of poetry, including De lunes todo el año, which won the Aguascalientes National Prize for Poetry in 1991 and Lotes baldíos, which was awarded the 1995 Carlos Pellicer prize. His poetry and short stories have established him as one of Mexico’s best-known writers over the past 30 years. He has compiled and retold a book of 125 oral Mexican short stories, Cuentos populares mexicanos (2014), which won the ‘White Raven Prize’ in 2015. His novel El lector a domicilio (2018) was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Award. He is also a prolific translator from Italian, and his own books have been widely translated.
    Praise for Fabio Morábito  'Morábito is a real discovery: reading him is like being in the room with someone who trusts you enough to think aloud. Immaculately translated, this selection covers 40 years' worth of unusually direct and intimate work. It mostly consists of columnar, free-verse poems that track the light and dark of thought and are by turns witty, sentimental, proverbial and nostalgic.'
    Fiona Sampson, The Guardian
    'an essential collection for anyone who cares about contemporary poetry. Gentle but caustically funny, humane but clear-sighted, it's a wonder that [Morábito's] work isn't better known in the UK. Invisible Dog should correct this omission and bring many more readers and writers into Morábito's bright and gently compelling orbit.'
    Luke Kennard, The Telegraph
    'Perhaps the term "co-author" might be more accurate than translator to describe Gwyn'€™s accomplishment -- €”a term which carries inherent within it a connotation of something derivative of the original, but not quite the real thing. Not so here. The spirit of fidelity to the original poems is retained throughout, and while Gywn avoids taking unnecessary risks or liberties (these poems fall somewhere between translations and versions), in the process of faithfully and accurately transporting the original cargo intact across the bridge between the two languages, he creates poetry of his own: the benchmark for a work of literary translation.'
    Colin Carberry, The High Window
    'Lucidly translated ... The book is filled with unforgettable poems addressing themes of masculinity, philosophy and the relentless passage of time, often with dark humour and irony, both well-known qualities of Morábito'€™s oeuvre ... A stunning collection.'
    Leo Boix, Morning Star
    'Invisible Dog is a big-hearted collection: suffused with exile and affection, funny and serious, wise and hopeful. These poems have been exposed to all the heat and light of a life, and now they offer a resolving simplicity, a gorgeous record of all that heat and light and happiness and loss. Richard Gwyn's translations capture Morábito's warmth of tone, the plain language with which he disentangles complex ideas, and the candour that should win him many readers in this language.'
    Ailbhe Darcy
    'Invisible Dog deals in vacated and reinhabited spaces: houses and parts of houses, languages, cities, the body, sites of danger or anticipation. In this, Morábito has found a companionable translator in Richard Gwyn – a writer who understands the logic of trespass, and the ambivalences and vexations of the homes we make for ourselves.'
    Abigail Parry
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The Carcanet Blog We've Moved! read more Books of the Year read more One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more
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