The True Actor

Jacinto Lucas Pires, translated by Jaime Braz and Dean Thomas Ellis

Release Date: November 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938604-48-8

Price: $14.95

eBook Price: $7.99

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DESCRIPTION

The favored prostitute of Lisbon’s rich and powerful has been found dead amid austerity protests in Portugal, and down-on-his-luck actor Americo Abril, who has just won the role of a lifetime playing Paul Giamatti in the avant-garde film Being Paul Giamatti, is the prime suspect.

Abril seeks the real killer, and he grapples with what it means to be Paul Giamatti. Confounded by the role he plays in the film and the roles that he plays in real life—weary dad, blocked artist, henpecked husband, miserable lover, wanted man—Abril struggles to hold together himself, his family, and his country.

The True Actor, the English debut by award-winning Portuguese author Jacinto Lucas Pires, manages both a postmodern boondoggle and a touching story of identity and love and loss in austerity-era Portugal.


PRAISE FOR THE TRUE ACTOR

The True Actor is a true pleasure–wise and funny with a subtle gravity and a wild hallucinatory streak. It brilliantly examines the state of a nation through one man's state of mind. Jacinto Lucas Pires is a powerful voice in modern fiction, charming, fearless, flourishing at the crossroads of the playful and the dire." –Sam Lipsyte, author of The Fun Parts and The Ask

“Politically conscious, cinematic, and everything else that is characteristic of the literature of Lucas Pires, all absorbed into and shaken out in a game of conscience in which he holds all the cards. And this book is his royal flush.” –TimeOut Lisbon

“Jacinto Lucas Pires’ third novel is a powerful political and social commentary, rooted in the character of a young actor steeped in the reality of his country’s current crisis.” –Espresso

“No other author could deconstruct, with such proficiency, our quotidian reality...” –Miguel Real, Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias

 

ABOUT JACINTO LUCAS PIRES

Jacinto Lucas Pires was born in Porto in 1974 and now lives in Lisbon. He is a writer, playwright, director, musician, and soccer aficionado. The True Actor won the 2013 Domingos da Silva Teixeira Distinguished Literature Award for the best book published in Portugal in the past two years. Pires won the prestigious Prémio Europa–David Mourão-Ferreira (Bari University, Italy/Instituto Camões, Portugal) in 2008. He plays with the band Os Quais. Several translations of his short prose recently appeared in an issue of The St. Petersburg Review translated by Jaime Braz and Dean Thomas Ellis.

 

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

Jaime Braz was born in 1958 in Luanda, Angola. He has a degree in Biology and teaches at a high school in the Portuguese town of Covilhâ, where he lives with his wife, son and dog. His paintings have been exhibited in Portugal and abroad and featured in the Russian edition of Esquire magazine. His short fiction has appeared in the St. Petersburg Review.

Dean Thomas Ellis is a writer and translator living in New Orleans. His work has appeared in Bloodroot, Bedtime Stories, St. Petersburg Review, KGB Bar Lit Journal, and in the online series Working Stiff at PBS.org. He hosts the radio programs Tudo Bem and The Dean's List on WWOZ-FM 90.7 in New Orleans and online at wwoz.org.

 

Jacinto Lucas Pires Fall 2013 Author Tour

 

Sun., Nov. 17 @ 7pm – New York City – KGB Bar – Readers include Jacinto Lucas Pires, Brian Sousa, and Laurie Stone.

Address: 85 East 4th St. NYC.

More Info: http://kgbbar.com/calendar/events/st_petersburg_review2/ 

(Sponsored by Arte Institute and the St. Petersburg Review) 

 

Mon., Nov. 18 @ 6:30pm – Newark – Rutgers University

Address: Paul Robeson Campus Center, room 235.

More Info: http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/events/book-signing-and-reading-novel-true-actor-portuguese-writer-jacinto-lucas-pires

(Sponsored by the Rutgers Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Arte Institute, the Consulate General of Portugal in Newark, and The Portuguese Club.)

 

Tues., Nov. 19 @ 7pm – Boston – Newtonville Books – Readers include Jacinto Lucas Pires and Alden Jones.

Address: 10 Langley Rd. Newton Centre Newton, MA.

More Info: http://www.newtonvillebooks.com/cms/2013/10/11/tues-nov-19-7pm-alden-jones-author-of-the-blind-masseuse-a-travelers-memoir-from-costa-rica-to-cambodia-and-jacinto-lucas-pires-author-of-the-true-actor-a-novel/

Wed., Nov. 20 @ 12pm – Dartmouth – UMass Dartmouth.

Address: UMass Dartmouth Campus, Prince Henry Society Reading Room at the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives.

(Sponsored by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture)

 

Wed., Nov. 20 @ 2pm – Fall River – Bristol Community College.   

Address: BCC campus. 

Thurs., Nov. 21 @ 8pm – Amherst – UMass Amherst – Visiting Writers Series

Address: University Club, UMass Amherst campus.

(Sponsored by the MFA Program for Poets and Writers, the Department of English, Program in Spanish and Portuguese, the UMass Translation Center, and the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)

Fri., Nov. 22 @ 8pm – Orlando – Functionally Literate Reading Series.

Address: The Gallery at Avalon Island, 39 S. Magnolia Ave., Orlando, FL.

More Info: http://functionallyliterate.org/

 

Sun., Nov. 24 @ 4:30pm – Miami – The Miami Book Fair.

Address: The Center for Literature and Theatre @ Miami Dade College, Room 8303. 

Mon., Nov. 25 @ 6pm – New Orleans – Garden District Book Shop.

Address: 2727 Prytania Street, New Orleans, LA.

More Info: http://www.gardendistrictbookshop.com/content/jacinto-lucas-pires-dean-thomas-ellis-true-actor

 

More info contact Dzanc Books/DISQUIET: ilp.lisbon@gmail.com