Daniel Hahn
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator. He is the author of several works of non-fiction, including the history book The Tower Menagerie. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature and one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, a series of reading guides for children and teenagers. His translations (from Portuguese, Spanish, and French) include fiction from Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
Matulai, the South Wind
By José Eduardo Agualusa, trans. by Daniel HahnAgualusa’s novels and stories hover over Angolan terrain riddled with the shrapnel of colonial violence, so this new collection's title, A Practical Guide to Levitation (Archipelago Books 2023), fits. The prose advances plot in light, lyrical tangents but keeps the full weight of historical trauma as an omnipresent fog. The refrain in this story, that Abacar's sleep is "deep and dreamless," suggests that the dream has escaped the character and now pervades the story, animating the landscape. Agualusa is one of the few truly hypnotizing writers working today.
