Author & Translator: About Uncle
12:00 pm PT
Online Event
Community Bookstore (Brooklyn, NY), Point Reyes Books (Pt Reyes, CA), and Third Place Books (Seattle, WA) team up for an online event with author Rebecca Gisler to discuss and celebrate the release of her new book About Uncle, translated by Jordan Stump. Rebecca and Jordan will appear in conversation with Stephen Sparks.
This online event is free to attend, but please consider purchasing About Uncle from one of our bookstore partners, Community Bookstore(opens in a new tab), Point Reyes Books(opens in a new tab), or Third Place Books(opens in a new tab).
About ABOUT UNCLE
Winner of the Swiss Literature Award (2022)
A freaky tale of isolation and the porous membranes between us, Rebecca Gisler’s slim novel renders a collapsing world with equal parts aversion, fascination, and tenderness.
At a time when she’d rather be making her own way in the world, an unnamed young woman finds herself moving to a small town at the seaside to care for her uncle. He’s a disabled veteran with questionable habits, prone to drinking, gorging, and hoarding—not to mention the occasional excursion down into the plumbing, where he might disappear for days at a time. When the world begins to shut down, Uncle and his niece are forced even closer still. But then Uncle’s health takes a final turn for the worse; he’s sent to a hospital that cares for cats, dogs, and Uncles; and any way for her to make sense of this eerie new reality, and her place in it, falls apart.
Poet-novelist Rebecca Gisler’s debut novel, set against our increasingly disjointed world, welcomes readers into a home of shut-ins as cozy as it is claustrophobic. Gisler’s bright, winding prose, masterfully translated from French by Jordan Stump, offers a rare witness to the complex ways in which we order our lives, for better or worse, inside and out.
Rebecca Gisler, born in Zurich in 1991, is a graduate of the Swiss Literature Institute and of the Master’s degree in Création littéraire at the University of Paris 8. She writes in German and French and translates her texts from one language into another. She has published poetry and prose in numerous magazines and anthologies. She is the co-organizer of the series Teppich in the House of Literature Zürich. In 2020 Rebecca Gisler won the 28th Open Mike literature competition.
Jordan Stump is a Professor of French at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; he has translated some thirty works of (mostly) contemporary French fiction, by such writers as Marie Redonnet, Eric Chevillard, and Scholastique Mukasonga, as well as seven works by Marie NDiaye, including the forthcoming Vengeance Is Mine. His translation of her The Cheffe was awarded the annual translation prize for fiction by the American Literary Translators’ Association.