The Pursuer

Julio Cortázar



José Muñoz (illustrations)

«I am as lonely as this cat, and much more lonely because I know I am, and it doesn’t. Condemned, it is sticking its claws in my hand. Bruno, jazz is not just music, and I am not just Johnny Carter.»

The Pursuer is one of Julio Cortázar’s greatest literary achievements and a classic of 20th century literature. With a magisterially-handled existential background, the story describes the final days of Johnny Carter, a virtuoso saxophonist whose life takes place on the knife-edge between lucidity and self-destruction.

Since its publication in 1959, this tribute by Cortázar to the genius Charlie Parker has aroused the passion of innumerable readers, who have considered it, like Rayuela, a formative experience. The great illustrator José Muñoz has been able to interpret with extraordinary talent the depth of this fiction in which jazz, nights of insomnia and Paris in the Fifties are the framework for a story beyond compare.



Illustrated by the creator of Alack Sinner, José Muñoz, winner of the Grand Prix of the Angoulême International Comics Festival 2oo7

18 x 26.5 cm; 88 pp. Cartoné con sobrecubierta

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José Muñoz

Buenos Aires, 1942



He was a protégé of Alberto Breccia and Hugo Pratt. He worked with Francisco Solano López on the famous series El Eternauta. With Carlos Sampayo, he would go on to create Alack Sinner, one of the most famous characters in the history of detective comics. In 1983, Muñoz was awarded the Yellow Kid Prize at the Lucca Festival in Italy; in 2002 he received the Max und Moritz Medal at the Erlangen Comic Fair in Germany and in 2007 he won the Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

Títulos publicados:
The Pursuer
Las fieras cómplices

Under Someone Else’s Rain

Juan Gelman



Carlos Alonso (illustrations)

«I close my eyes in the Roman sunshine. You pass over Rome, Sun, and in a few hours over what used to be my home, not taking me with you but lighting up places where I’m missing, which I claim, which claim me. You’ll warm them anyway, just when I’ll be shivering with cold.»

Juan Gelman wrote Under Someone Else’s Rain in 1980, during his exile in Rome. The texts in this book make up a mosaic of poignant reflections on exile, absence and grief. Created with a similar degree of feeling and depth, Carlos Alonso’s etchings resonate with Gelman’s words.

The combination of word and image generates an emotive statement of resplendent clarity.

160 x 240 mm; 64 pp. Hardback with Jacket

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Carlos Alonso

Tunuyán, Argentina, 1929



Painter, sculptor and illustrator, he studied Fine Art at the University of Cuyo, Mendoza, where he was taught by Lino Spilimbergo. He has illustrated works by Pablo Neruda, Dante Alighieri and Miguel de Cervantes. Since the seventies, the expressive power and social commitment that characterise his work have earned widespread recognition, with exhibitions all over the world. Between 1976 and 1981 he lived in exile in Rome and Madrid. Alonso is one of the great figures in Latin American art.

Títulos publicados:
Under Someone Else's Rain

The Great Zoo

Nicolás Guillén



Arnal Ballester (illustrations)

«In the aquarium of the Great Zoo, / swims the Caribbean. This seagoing / and enigmatic animal / has a crystal crescent, a blue back, a green tail, / a belly of dense coral, / gray fins of cylcone speed. In the aquarium, this inscription: “Beware: it bites”.»

An unusual bestiary and a surprising book of tales in which poetry, humour and social commentary flow together, The Great Zoo is one of the key works in Latin American poetry. Guillen’s astonishing verbal power achieves its maximum expression in these texts

With these illustrations, Arnal Ballester, winner of the National Prize for Illustration 2008, has managed to establish a surprising dialogue with the words of the great Cuban poet, to create a work without compare.

Arnal Ballester, National Prize for Illustration 2008

160 x 240 mm; 64 pp. Hardback with Jacket | ISBN: 978-84-96509-38-9

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Arnal Ballester

Barcelona, 1955



Teacher of illustration at the Massana School of Art and Design in Barcelona. He has published over fifty works. In 1993 he won the National Prize for books published in Spain for children and young people, and in 1994, he won the Illustrator of the Year prize at the Bologna-UNICEF Book Fair. In 1996 his work appeared in the international exhibition The Secret Garden, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Bologna Book Fair. In 2008 the Spanish Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Illustration Prize.

Títulos publicados:
The Great Zoo

Poe

Jordi Sierra i Fabra



Alberto Vázquez (illustrations)

«Some days they were forced to eat bread and molasses. There was nothing else. Maria Clemm did needlework. Virigina was too weak. They often went cold rather than use fuel for the stove; but they could not scrimp on whale oil or petrol for the lamp, because in the dark it was impossible to write.»

In these pages, Edgar Allan Poe’s life is given its human dimension, that of a writer whose genius must struggle against adversity. Scandal, misery, death, madness and, throughout it all, the forging of a sublime body of work, fill the days and nights of a creative visionary, one who was marked by tragedy.

Jordi Sierra i Fabra, winner of the National Prize for Young People’s and Children’s literature, has succeeded in creating a vivid portrait of Poe and his work, which Alberto Vázquez has endowed with extraordinary images.

Jordi Sierra i Fabra was nominated for Hans Christian Andersen Award 2010

160 x 140 mm; 58 pp. Paperback

The Bloody Countess

Alejandra Pizarnik



Santiago Caruso (illustrations)

«Sitting on her throne, the countess watches people under torture, she listens to their screams. Her ancient, vile servant women are silent figures who bring fire, knives, needles, manacles; who torture young girls, then later bury them. Like the manacles or the knives, these old hags are instruments of possession. This dark ceremony has but a single, silent spectator.»

Accused of murdering six hundred young girls, Erzsebet Bathory is one of the most sinister criminals in history. In her castle in the Carpathians, at the end of the 17th century, the countess crouches over her victims to bleed them to death and steal their youth. Her evil, fascinating legend has survived over the ages.

The Bloody Countess is one of the key works by Alejandra Pizarnik. Its pages are a masterful portrait of sadism and madness, which the prints of the artist Santiago Caruso recreate to the point of perfection.

180 x 265 mm; 88 pp. Hardback with Jacket

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Arthur Gordon Pym

Edgar Allan Poe



Luis Scafati (illustrations)

«Comprising the details of a mutiny and atrocious butchery on board the american brig Grampus, on her way to the south seas, in the month of june, 1827 with an account of the recapture of the vessel by the survivers; their shipwreck and subsequent horrible sufferings from famine; their deliverance by means of the british schooner Jane Guy; the brief cruise of this latter vessel in the antarctic ocean; her capture, and the massacre of her crew among a group of islands in the eighty-fourth parallel of southern latitude; together with the incredible adventures and discoveries still farther south to which that distressing calamity gave rise.»

Luis Scafati’s talented illustrations enlighten the delightful terrors of this novel, which encloses all the obsessions of the brilliant Edgar Allan Poe.

165 x 240 mm; 248 pp. Hardback with Jacket

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Dracula

Luis Scafati

«Dead while the sun illuminates the day, the Count awaits the return of the shadows that will awaken him; then, like a sinister nocturnal animal, he will pursue new victims whose blood will feed his immortality.»

A journey through inhospitable places and closed rooms, where life and death savagely devour each other. With his excellent illustration work consisting of more than 50 drawings, Luis Scafati pays tribute to this mythical character and to the vast imagination that has inspired vampire literature for centuries.

265 x 210 mm; 108 pp. Hardback
ISBN: 978-84-96509-50-4 / Català: 978-84-96509-68-9

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About Dracula

Luis Scafati and other vampires

The Absent City

Ricardo Piglia



Luis Scafati y Pablo de Santis
Graphic novel

«It’s an island in a bend of the river, inhabited by the English, the Irish, the Russians, and by people who have come from all over the world, persecuted by the authorities, threatened with death, politically exiled. All the different languages are mixed together there, and all their voices can be heard. Nobody arrives, and those that arrive don’t want to return. Because that’s where the dead seek refuge.»
A journalist follows the tracks of a complex thriller: a secret museum, the story of a machine that can create its own stories, a utopian island, fictions that mix together and which exist within other fictions. The Absent City by Ricardo Piglia is a narrative tour de force in which crime thrillers and fantasy literature mix wonderfully.

Luis Scafati and Pablo De Santis have been able to interpret this giddy story to create a unique work, a marvellous example of the graphic novel.

180 x 265 mm; 88 pp. Hardback with Jacket | ISBN: 978-84-92412-12-9

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See Luis Scafati's biography
See Pablo de Santis's biography

Pablo De Santis

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1963

His work was awarded the Grand Prix at the Tokyo Print Biennial (1966), the International Prize for painting at Darmstadt, Germany (1967); the Grand Prix at the Krakow Print Biennial (1968); the Grand Prix of the National Arts Fund, Buenos Aires (1990); the Gold Medal of the Triennial of Graphic Arts in Norway (1995). In 2005 the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris organized a successful retrospective of his work.

Títulos publicados:
The Absent City

The Black Cat

Edgar Allan Poe



Luis Scafati (illustrations)

«I neither expect nor ask that you believe in this savage yet homely story I am going to write. It would be madness to expect this as even my own senses reject the evidence. Nevertheless, I am not mad and I can assure you I’m not dreaming.»

So begins The Black Cat, the story that gives this volume its title. In the short stories in this collection, the everyday reveals to the reader a second, darker nature. Hallucination or reality? An ambiguous threshold to the fantastical universe of Edgar Allen Poe.

Elvio E. Gandolfo (translation)

45 x 205 mm; 60/72 pp. Hardback | ISBN: 84-9795-142-5

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Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka



Luis Scafati (illustrations)

«When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armour-plated back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly.»

A key work in his narrative production, Metamorphosis is a vast and vivid nightmare that concentrates all of the intensity of Franz Kafka. The illustrations by the great Argentine artist Luis Scafati wonderfully recreate the story’s strange atmospheres and characters.

César Aira (translation)

245 x 205 mm; 60/72 pp. Hardback | ISBN: 84-9795-003-8

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Classics in pocket version

Kafka & Poe



Luis Scafati (illustrations)

A key work in his narrative production, Metamorphosis, is a vast and vivid nightmare that concentrates all of the intensity of Franz Kafka. The illustrations by the great Argentine artist Luis Scafati wonderfully recreate the story’s strange atmospheres and characters.



The Black Cat, the story that gives this volume its title. In the short stories in this collection, the everyday reveals to the reader a second, darker nature. Hallucination or reality? An ambiguous threshold to the fantastical universe of Edgar Allen Poe.

13 x 23 cm. 128 pp. Rústica con solapas

Luis Scafati

Mendoza, Argentina, 1947



Studied Arts at the National University of Cuyo. His work has been exhibited in Barcelona, Frankfurt and Madrid and forms part of the collections of major museums in Buenos Aires; it is also owned by the House of Humour and Satire (Bulgaria), the Collection of Cartoons (Switzerland) and the University of Essex (England). His work has been published in Brazil, Czech Republic, England, France, Greece, Italy, Korea, Mexico and Spain. He won the Grand Prix of Honour at the National Comics Salon (Buenos Aires, 1981).

Títulos publicados:
Dracula
The Black Cat
Metamorphosis
La aventura del Town-Ho
The Absent City
Arthur Gordon Pym

Meeting

Julio Cortázar



Enrique Brecci (illustrations)

«I remember the man who started to shout that we had to surrender, and the voice that answered him between two bursts of a Thompson, the voice of the Lieutenant, a roar above the shooting: “No one surrenders here, damm it!”»

Meeting describes the difficult days that followed the landing of the Granma on the coast of Cuba, when Ernesto Guevara made his mark as a combatant in the revolution. Written vividly in the first person, the voice of «Che» recalls their exhausting days spent among the mangrove swamps, the setbacks that he had to face alongside his comrades in arms and his baptism of fire at the battle of Alegría del Pío.

The intensity of Meeting and its epic quality based on profound emotions are an example of the incomparable talent of Julio Cortázar, and his ability to depict the profound humanity of one of the 20th century’s most admired figures.The illustrations of Enrique Breccia recreate the key moments of this account.

180 x 265 mm; 40 pp. Hardback with Jacket | ISBN: 978-84-96509-79-5

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Julio Cortázar with Zorro Rojo

«There at the end is death, but don’t be afraid. Hold the watch tight with one hand, take the stem with two fingers, and rotate it smoothly. Now another installment of time opens, trees spread their leaves, boats run races, like a fan time continues filling with itself, and from it the eruption of air, the breezes of the earth, the shadow of a woman, the sweet smell of bread.» Instructions for winding a watch.

... and the literature of Julio Cortázar

Twenty-five years after the death of the author of Rayuela, Libros del Zorro Rojo invites you to discover its illustrated editions of Julio Cortázar’s work.



The Pursuer (+ info)
Is one of Julio Cortázar’s greatest literary achievements and a classic of 20th century literature. With a magisterially-handled existential background, the story describes the final days of Johnny Carter, a virtuoso saxophonist whose life takes place on the knife-edge between lucidity and self-destruction. The great illustrator José Muñoz has been able to interpret with extraordinary talent the depth of this fiction in which jazz, nights of insomnia and Paris in the Fifties are the framework for a story beyond compare.




Meeting (+ info)
Meeting is one of the key narratives in Cortázar’s political work, recreating the period when Ernesto Guevara fought as a revolutionary soldier after disembarking at Granma on the coast of Cuba. An epic, moving tale, masterfully illustrated by Enrique Breccia, who, like Cortázar, has captured the full human dimension of Che.




The Bear’s Discourse (+ info)
For little ones, the children’s book The Bear’s Discourse, illustrated by Emilio Urberuaga, which Cortázar wrote specifically for two children in 1952. The bear in this story lives in the ventilation ducts of a building, and during the night observes the strange world of people. Taking the strange noises of the night, Cortázar was able to create a tale full of delight, capable of scaring away fear.