A Musical Offering - by Luis Sagasti (Paperback)

About the Book

A lyrical celebration of storytelling, of childhood, and of the transformative power of music.

Book Synopsis

A lyrical celebration of storytelling, of childhood, and of the transformative power of music.

Tracing a circular course that echoes Bach's Goldberg Variations, Luis Sagasti's second book to appear in English takes the guise of a musical scheherazade, recounting story after story, vibrating to celestial harmonies. From the music born of the sun to the music sent into space on the Voyager mission, from Rothko to rock music, from the composers of the concentration camps to a weeping room for Argentinian conscripts in the Falklands, A Musical Offering traverses the shifting sands of fiction and history.

Review Quotes

Republic of Consciousness Prize (Shortlist)
Society of Authors Valle-Inclán Prize (Winner)

"Fluidity, charm, emotion and disarming brushes of grace." --The Wall Street Journal

"A bewitching suite of stories about music, heard and unheard." --The Arts Desk

"A beautiful, fragmentary rendition which never strikes a false note." --Irish Times

"A Musical Offering is less an attempt to write about music than to actually write music - using words as a new kind of notation." --Will Ashon, author of CHAMBER MUSIC and STRANGE LABYRINTH

"There are people who have shaped my mind, artists without whom I could not have written a word: Werner Herzog, Adam Curtis, Alan Moore, Luis Sagasti." --Benjamín Labatut, author of WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD

"The literary equivalent of a symphony." --Books and Bao

"Sagasti handles his elements masterfully, subtly and dexterously weaves new threads into his tapestry." --BookBlast

"A work of immense complexity, great balance and extraordinary beauty." --The Monthly Booking

"Sagasti manages to create a world rich in illuminations and philosophical reflections." --Morning Star

"Sagasti's careful contrapuntal construction weaves together an eclectic range of vignettes which transcend their parts, leaving an indelible emotional impact that defies rationalisation." --Gutter Magazine

"I have gained knowledge I didn't know I needed." --Joyzine

"A veritable fugue of insights and literary forms, subtlety and humour." --Asymptote

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Praise for Luis Sagasti

Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize (Shortlist)

"A genre-defying collection of associative musings on art, music, philosophy, and literature." --Publishers Weekly

"A subtle marvel...a nimble writer who merits wider readership in English." --Kirkus

"Innovative, playful, and beautifully executed." --Carlos Fonseca, author of AUSTRAL

"Simply genius." --Enrique Vila-Matas, author of DUBLINESQUE

"A work of wonderful analogies and disparate historical footnotes." --Morning Star

"Like Borges before him, Sagasti has produced a rare thing: a work of fiction as learned as it is fun." --Gary M. Perry, Foyles Charing Cross

"One hundred pages of pure intelligence, to be enjoyed listening to Sun Ra." --L'Arbre Vengeur

"Sagasti produces here a magnificent constellation of stories, and in doing so pays tribute to art." --Fnac

About the Author

Luis Sagasti, a writer, lecturer and art critic, was born in Bahía Blanca, Argentina in 1963. He studied History at the Universidad Nacional del Sur, where he now teaches. From 1995 to 2003 he was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bahía Blanca, authoring numerous art catalogues for exhibitions. As well as Fireflies and A Musical Offering, published by Charco, he has several other novels: El Canon de Leipzig (1999), Los Mares de la luna (2006), Maelstrom (2015), Leyden Ltd. (2019)__ -__ a book composed entirely of footnotes - and most recently Lenguas vivas (2023).

Fionn Petch is a Scottish-born translator working from Spanish, Italian and French into English. He lived in Mexico City for 12 years, where he completed a PhD in Philosophy at the UNAM. His translations of Latin American literature for Charco Press have been widely acclaimed. Fireflies by Luis Sagasti was shortlisted for the Translators' Association First Translation Award 2018. The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros received an English PEN Award in 2018. A Musical Offering, also by Luis Sagasti, was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2021 and won the Society of Authors Premio Valle Inclán 2021 for best translation from Spanish. He now lives in Berlin.