Sergio Pitol, la realidad de escenarios y la influencia de las literaturas no le han impedido a Sergio Pitol la creación de un mundo auténtico. El incendio que amenaza a cada uno de los personajes y el cerco de palabras que no ofrece resquicios pertenecen a un escritor profundamente singular. Al renunciar a escribir en la bitácora del extranjero, Sergio Pitol se ha vuelto nativo de su propio mundo, un mundo tan intenso y rico en cambios y matices como el más vigoroso de los elementos, el fuego

Sí, en efecto, Sergio Pitol ha vuelto a recorrer algunos de sus territorios que suponíamos había perdido. En esta aparición nos confía algunos trozos de sus diarios de viaje. Concretamente uno que va de Praga al Cáucaso, a Tiflis, la capital de Georgia, pasando por Moscú y por la ciudad que entonces se llamaba Leningrado, en un aparente despertar de primavera

The debut work in English by Mexico's greatest and most influential living author and winner of the Cervantes Prize ("the Spanish language Nobel"), The Art of Flight takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the world's cultural capitals as Sergio Pitol looks back on his well-traveled life as a legendary author, translator, scholar, and diplomat. The first work in Pitol's "Trilogy of Memory," The Art of Flight imaginatively blends the genres of fiction and memoir in a Borgesian swirl of contemplation and mystery, expanding our understanding and appreciation of what literature can be and what it can do

"Sergio Pitol is not only our best active storyteller, he is also the bravest renovator of our literature." — Álvaro Enrigue, Letras Libres Pitol is unfathomable; it could almost be said that he is a literature entire of himself." — Daniel Saldaña Paris, author of Among Strange Victims "Pitol is probably one of Mexico's most culturally complex and composite writers. He is certainly the strangest, most unfathomable, and eccentric. . [His] voice. . reverberates beyond the margins of his books." — Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd "Reading him, one has the impression. . of being before the greatest writer in the Spanish language in our time." — Enrique Vila-Matas The Journey features one of the world's master storytellers at work as he skillfully recounts two weeks of travel around the Soviet Union in 1986. From the first paragraph, Sergio Pitol dislocates the sense of reality, masterfully and playfully blurring the lines between fiction and fact. This adventurous story, based on the author's own travel journals, parades through some of the territories that the author lived in and traveled through (Prague, the Caucasus, Moscow, Leningrad) as he reflects on the impact of Russia's sacred literary pantheon in his life and the power that literature holds over us all. The Journey, the second work in Pitol's remarkable "Trilogy of Memory" (which Deep Vellum is publishing in its entirety), which won him the prestigious Cervantes Prize in 2005 and inspired the newest generation of Spanish-language writers, represents the perfect example of one of the world's greatest authors at the peak of his power