Resistance - by Julián Fuks (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

My brother is adopted, but I can't say and don't want to say that my brother is adopted. If I say this, if I speak these words that I have long taken care to silence, I reduce my brother to a single categorical condition, a single essential attribute...A young couple, involved in the struggle against the military dictatorship in 1970s Argentina, must flee the country. The brutality and terror of the regime is closing in around them. Friends are being 'disappeared'. Their names are on a list. Time is running out. When they leave, they take with them their infant son, adopted after years of trying for a child without success. They build a new life in Brazil and things change radically. The family grows as the couple have two more children: a son and a daughter.Resistance unfolds as an intimate portrayal of the formation of a family under extraordinary circumstances, told from the point of view of the youngest child. It's an examination of identity, of family bonds, of the different forms that exile can take, of what it means to belong to a place, to a family, to your own past.Already winner of the Jabuti Award for Book of the Year 2016 (Brazil), the José Saramago Literary Prize 2017 (Portugal) and the Anna Seghers Prize 2018 (Germany), Resistance demonstrates remarkable courage and skill by one of Brazil's rising literary stars.

Review Quotes

International Dublin Literature Prize (Longlist)
English PEN (Award)
José Saramago Literary Prize (Winner)
Jabuti Award for Best Foreign Edition (Winner)
Oceanos Prize for Literature in Portuguese (Winner)
Jabuti Award for Book of the Year (Winner)
Anna Seghers Prize (Winner)

"Fuks's skill lies in his quiet exploration of how exclusion -- willed or imposed -- shapes experience within families." --New York Times

"This small book carries a big punch...Fuks is a young writer to watch." --The Guardian

"Fuks' prose is rythmic and patterned." --The Times Literary Supplement

"Eloquent, unsettling and deeply philosophical." --The Financial Times

"Fuk's work, while challenging in form, comes together in a powerful way. This is a thoughtful novel about identity and exile." --Publishers Weekly

"This elegant, essayistic novel, the first translated into English by this Brazilian writer, is a family drama with the dramatic parts deliberately quieted.... Fuks impressively inhabits the near despair that comes with the fragmentation of family and country." --Kirkus

"Resistance is an urgent and profound novel, a meditation on family, home and dislocation. Fuks focuses on a single family living in Brazil, years after fleeing Argentina. One of the best novels I've read concerning the generation after Brazil's military regime. Fuks' writing is sharp and humane, intimate and lyrical. A stunning work." --Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore

"A brilliant achievement." --Le Monde

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Praise for Julián Fuks
Part of The New York Times' The Decameron Project: New Fiction.

"Fiction to look out for in 2021." --The Observer

"...a thoughtful, intimate exploration of how people literally and figuratively occupy their own stories and those of others." --Publishers Weekly

"Poignant, thought-provoking and engaging." --The Scotsman

"Wholly mesmerising." --Irish Times

"Best books of 2021" --The Financial Times

"This is one beautiful book."" --Mia Couto

"A slender yet striking novel." --Hopscotch Translation

"Occupation asks a lot of its readers, but it gives in equal measure; and when you do come up for air, you look around you with a renewed and invigorated sense of the space you occupy in your own life. Superb." --Lunate

"A quiet masterpiece." --Asymptote

"In Fuks' prose occupation and resistance walk hand-in-hand." --Full Stop

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About the Author

Julián Fuks was born in São Paulo in 1981 and is the son of Argentinian parents. As an author whose work has garnered several top international literary prizes, Fuks has gained recognition as one of Brazil's most outstanding young writers. He has worked as a reporter for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo and as a reviewer for the magazine Cult . Fuks is the author of Histórias de literatura e cegueira (2007) and Procura do romance (2011), both shortlisted for the Oceanos Award as well as for the Jabuti Award. During 2017, Julián Fuks worked alongside Mia Couto as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. Considered by Fuks to be his most important work to date, Resistance was the winner of the Jabuti Award for Book of the Year (2016), the Oceanos Prize (2016), the José Saramago Literary Prize (2017) and the Anna Seghers Prize (2018). He currently lives in São Paulo.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator with over one hundred books to his name. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) include fiction from Europe, Africa and the Americas and non-fiction by writers ranging from Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to Brazilian footballer Pelé. Recent books include the new Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and translations of Julián Fuks' Resistance and Occupation . He is a former chair of the Society of Authors and is presently on the board of a number of organisations that deal with literature, literacy, translation and free expression. In 2021 Daniel was made an OBE for his services to literature.