Searingly political, extravagantly stylish non-fiction from a queer Latin American literary icon, in English for the first time __________ 'Lemebel doesn't have to write poetry to be the best poet of my generation... When everyone who has treated him like dirt is lost in the cesspit or in nothingness, Pedro Lemebel will still be a star' Roberto Bolaño 'Lemebel's critique of the western colonisation of sexual identity was almost as vicious as it was of the Pinochet dictatorship' Observer 'He speaks brilliantly for a difference that refuses to disappear' Garth Greenwell, New Yorker __________ "I speak from my difference" wrote Pedro Lemebel, the Chilean writer who became an icon of resistance and queer transgression across Latin America. His innovative essays, which combine memoir, reportage, history and fiction, brought visibility and dignity to the lives of sexual minorities, the poor and the powerless. As Chile emerged from Pinochet's brutal dictatorship into a flawed democracy, Lemebel shone a light on lives and events that many wanted to suppress: the last days of trans sex workers dying of AIDS, the glitzy literary salon held above a torture chamber, and the queer sex and community found in Santiago's clubs, parks and back alleys. In a baroque, freewheeling style that fused political urgency with playfulness, resistance with camp, he re-wrote his country's history from the margins.
Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015) is considered one of the most important queer writers of twentieth-century Latin America and was also an activist and a performance artist. Born in Santiago, Chile, he became a renowned voice of Latin American counterculture during the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath. He received Chile's José Donoso Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is best known for his crónicas and one novel, My Tender Matador, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was adapted in 2020 into a critically acclaimed film by Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda.
