With her debut in the UK, Kopf presents the recently published English translation of Germà de Gel, published by And Other Stories on 23 April 2018.
Germà de Gel won the Documenta award in 2015, and the Llibreter award in 2016. In 2017, it’s English translation, by Mara Faye Lethem, won the very prestigious PEN Translates award.
Since its publication, Brother in Ice has been featured in many notorious news outlets such as the BBC, and has been reviewed by Britain’s most outspoken literary critics. In The Guardian, author Lauren Elkin highlights that “Kopf frequently juxtaposes science with the metaphysical, or with quotidian banality”. Connor Goodwin in The Washington Post, one of the most respected newspapers in the United States, writes “Brother in Ice reads like a diary, a travelogue, a collection of philosophical meditations and a series of historical research notes. The lack of a traditional plot is buoyed by the book’s startling pace, which makes for a fresh and invigorating read.”
Brother In Ice: She thought that it was precisely when things get uncomfortable or can’t be shown that something interesting comes to light. That is the point of no return, the point that must be reached, the point you reach after crossing the border of what has already been said, what has already been seen. It’s cold out there.
Alicia Kopf’s hybrid novel Brother In Ice – part research notes, part fictionalized diary, and part travelogue – uses the stories of polar exploration to make sense of the protagonist’s own concerns as she comes of age as an artist, a daughter, and a sister to an autistic brother. Conceptually and emotionally compelling, it advances fearlessly into the frozen emotional lacunae of difficult family relationships. Deserving winner of multiple awards upon its Catalan and Spanish publication, Brother in Ice is a richly rewarding journey into the unknown.
‘In an epistolic, polar update of Melville’s Moby Dick, this genre-defying book rises as clear and cold as an Arctic sea, floating with ideas that, like icebergs, are buoyed up by meaning and memory below their surface. This is an icy dissection of actuality and history, a frozen etymology of meaning.’ Philip Hoare
‘A book, part essay and part autobiography, that is also a chronicle of a generation stalled in a world without horizons or certainties… An unusual book and the deserving winner of the Premi Documenta literary award.’ La Vanguardia.
Alicia Kopf was born in 1982 and is a writer and artist based in Barcelona. Brother in Ice is the culmination of an artistic cycle of exhibitions entitled Àrticantàrtic, Her awards include the GAC-DKV Prize for best young artist gallery exhibition. The original Catalan manuscript of Brother in Ice won the 2015 Premi Documenta, a prestigious prize for an unpublished Catalan-language work of literature, and upon publication was awarded the 2016 Premi Llibreter by Catalan booksellers. The Spanish edition received further prizes, including the Premio El Ojo Crítico, awarded by Spanish National Radio. The English-language edition is published by And Other Stories in April 2018 and is translated into English by Mara Faye Lethem.
Based between Barcelona and Brooklyn, Mara Faye Lethem translates from Catalan and Spanish. She has translated many contemporary novelists, and is a reviewer for the New York Times.
J. R. Carpenter is a Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, performer, researcher, and maker of maps, zines, books, poetry, short fiction, long fiction, non-fiction, and non-linear, intertextual, hypermedia, and computer-generated narratives. Her pioneering works of digital literature have been exhibited, published, performed, and presented in journals, galleries, museums, and festivals around the world. She is a winner of the CBC Quebec Writing Competition (2003 & 2005), the QWF Carte Blanche Quebec Award (2008), the Expozine Alternative Press Award for Best English Book (2008), the Dot Award for Digital Literature (2015), and the New Media Writing Prize (2016).
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