Luis Buñuel: My Last Breath (1982-) [Spanish/English]

A provocative memoir from Luis Buñuel, the Academy Award winning creator of some of modern cinema’s most important films, from Un Chien Andalou to The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

Luis Buñuel’s films have the power to shock, inspire, and reinvent our world. Now, in a memoir that carries all the surrealism and subversion of his cinema, Buñuel turns his artistic gaze inward. In swift and generous prose, Buñuel traces the surprising contours of his life, from the Good Friday drumbeats of his childhood to the dreams that inspired his most famous films to his turbulent friendships with Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí. His personal narratives also encompass the pressing political issues of his time, many of which still haunt us today—the specter of fascism, the culture wars, the nuclear bomb. Filled with film trivia, framed by Buñuel’s intellect and wit, this is essential reading for fans of cinema and for anyone who has ever wanted to see the world through a surrealist’s eyes.

Originally published in French as Mon dernier soupir, Editions Robert Laffont, 1982

English edition
Translated by Abigail Israel
This translation first published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1983
Publisher Fontana Paperbacks, a division of Collins Publishing Group, London, 1985
266 pages

Mi último suspiro (Spanish, trans. Ana M. de la Fuente, 1982)
My Last Breath (English, trans. Abigail Israel, 1985)

Chris Marker: The Forthright Spirit (1949/1951)

Chris Marker‘s debut novel.

“His friend Alain Resnais recalls that Marker favored a 1951 English translation of his prizewinning (Prix Orion, 1950) novel [..] because it had so little resemblance to the original.” (source)

Originally published in French as Le cœur net, Le Seuil, Paris, 1949.

Translated by Robert Kee and Terence Kilmartin
Publisher Allan Wingate, London, 1951
191 pages

Review: Roger Tailleur (Rouge, 1963/2007)
Commentary: Edward Gauvin (2012).

PDF (6 MB, updated on 2016-10-7)

E. M. Cioran: A Short History of Decay (1949–) [ES, EN, RO, PT]

E. M. Cioran confronts the place of today’s world in the context of human history—focusing on such major issues of the twentieth century as human progress, fanaticism, and science—in this nihilistic and witty collection of aphoristic essays concerning the nature of civilization in mid-twentieth-century Europe. Touching upon Man’s need to worship, the feebleness of God, the downfall of the Ancient Greeks and the melancholy baseness of all existence, Cioran’s pieces are pessimistic in the extreme, but also display a beautiful certainty that renders them delicate, vivid, and memorable. Illuminating and brutally honest, A Short History of Decay dissects Man’s decadence in a remarkable series of moving and beautiful pieces.

Originally published in French as Précis de decomposition, Gallimard, 1949

English edition
Translated by Richard Howard
First published by Seaver Books, 1975
Publisher Penguin, 2010 (PDF)
Publisher Arcade Publishing, New York, 2012 (EPUB), with a Foreword by Eugene Thacker
ISBN 161145736X, 9781611457360
181 pages

publisher (EN)
google books (EN)

Breviario de podredumbre (Spanish, trans. Fernando Savater, 1972)
A Short History of Decay (English, trans. Richard Howard, 1975/2010, PDF, added on 2013-9-26)
A Short History of Decay (English, trans. Richard Howard, 1975/2012, EPUB)
Tratat de descompunere (Romanian, trans. Lisandru Neamtu, 1992, updated on 2013-5-31, via sorin)
Breviário da decomposição (Portuguese, trans. José Thomaz Brum, 1995, no OCR)