Writing alum Hannah Kauders '20 will publish a new translation of Fátima Vélez’s novel, Galapagos this December with Astra House, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
The book follows Lorenzo and a group of his artist friends, all dying of AIDS, as they take a surreal journey on a custom ship from Colombia to Paris, from Paris to the French countryside, and finally to the Galápagos Archipelago, connecting along the way with former lovers. A contemporary plague novel, the characters challenge the way readers understand sexuality, mortality, and illness.
According to Kirkus Reviews, “The words 'HIV' and 'AIDS' never appear, but the novel’s 1992 setting, the overwhelming queerness of the plague victims, and the symptoms described make the subject clear. Vélez embraces the grotesquerie of decay from the very first page.”
Fellow Writing alum and Adjunct Assistant Professor Molly McGhee '20 called the novel “Kaleidoscopically raw. A tour-de-force of interiority balanced expertly with the gruesome reality of the bodies we live within. Kauders’ translation is a lesson in poetry. Prepare to be unspooled.”
Kauders works in the Writing Program at Harvard University. She has taught in the Columbia University Writing Program and in the Barnard College Comparative Literature department. She has been a finalist for The Iowa Review Award, shortlisted for the Premio Valle Inclán from The Society of Spanish Authors, and nominated for the International Booker Prize. Her writing can be found in The Drift, Astra Magazine, Gulf Coast Magazine, Fiction International. She is currently at work on a novel.
