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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > All is Silence

All is Silence

Fins and Brinco are best friends, and they both adore the wild and beautiful Leda. The three young friends spend their days exploring the dunes and picking through the treasures that the sea washes on to the shores of Galicia. One day, as they are playing in the abandoned school on the edge of the village, they come across treasure of another kind: a huge cache of whisky hidden under a sheet. But before they can exploit their discovery a shot rings out, and a man wearing an impeccable white suit and panama hat enters the room. That day they learn the most important lesson of all, that the mouth is for keeping quiet.

‘A haunting, wonderfully poetic novel’
Guardian

‘Rivas magically immerses us in the labyrinth of saudade, illuminating paths that show us the way to paradise lost.‘
El País

Author

Manuel Rivas

Manuel Rivas

Books

All is Silence

The Low Voices

Manuel Rivas was born in Coruña in 1957. He writes in the Galician language of north-west Spain. He is well known in Spain for his journalism, as well as for his prize-winning short stories and novels, which include the internationally acclaimed The Carpenter’s Pencil and Books Burn Badly. His works have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Translator

Jonathan Dunne

Jonathan Dunne

Books

All is Silence

The Low Voices

Jonathan Dunne was educated at Oxford University and holds advanced diplomas in Spanish, Galician, and Bulgarian. His many translations include: from Spanish, two novels by Enrique Vila-Matas, Bartleby & Co and Montano’s Malady, nominated for the 2008 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; from the Galician, In the Wilderness, nominated for the 2004 Weidenfeld Translation Prize, and The Carpenter’s Pencil, nominated for the 2003 International IMPAC Award, both by Manuel Rivas; from Catalan, In the Last Blue by Carme Riera; and from Bulgarian Iana Boukova’s poems in Take Five 07. He is the author of The DNA of the English Language (2007) and a collection of poetry entitled Even Though That (2004).

Published by

Harvill Secker, 2013
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Fins and Brinco are best friends, and they both adore the wild and beautiful Leda. The three young friends spend their days exploring the dunes and picking through the treasures that the sea washes on to the shores of Galicia. One day, as they are playing in the abandoned school on the edge of the village, they come across treasure of another kind: a huge cache of whisky hidden under a sheet. But before they can exploit their discovery a shot rings out, and a man wearing an impeccable white suit and panama hat enters the room. That day they learn the most important lesson of all, that the mouth is for keeping quiet.

‘A haunting, wonderfully poetic novel’
Guardian

‘Rivas magically immerses us in the labyrinth of saudade, illuminating paths that show us the way to paradise lost.‘
El País

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