Gustavo Faverón Patriau’s debut novel The Antiquarian, first published in Spanish in 2011 to effusive acclaim, continues to gain momentum with a suite of new translations lined up for the upcoming year, including an English edition to be released on June 3, 2014. Faverón Patriau, a Peruvian writer and scholar, is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and director of Bowdoin’s Latin American Studies Program.
A neo-gothic psychological thriller that explores the underground culture of obsessive book collectors while probing connections between madness and social violence, The Antiquarian has been lauded as an “ambitious, complex novel” by none other than the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.
“Those who read by simultaneously working with the writer, fantasizing alongside him, capable of enjoying the subtleties and secrets of a text as rich and profound as the text of this novel, will never forget it,” wrote Vargas Llosa, in a long letter to Faverón Patriau in praise of the book. This letter “was thrilling for me because Vargas Llosa was the first contemporary novelist I ever read when I was a kid,” Faverón Patriau said.