As part of Pushkin Press’s effort to bring the writing of the late Chilean writer Pedro Lemebel to a new Anglophone audience, the press has just reissued Katherine Silver’s 2003 translation of the writer’s most popular work and only novel, My Tender Matador (Tengo Miedo Torero).
Lemebel, who was openly queer, was known for his radical politics and outspokenness. My Tender Matador is an almost-perfect introduction to Lemebel and everything he stood for.
The novel, which is set near the end of Pinochet’s rule, concerns a sex worker known as the Queen of the Corner and her romance with the much-younger Carlos. Queen is a travesti, a gender identity that is specific to Latin America. Over here, we would probably consider her to be trans but, much like the Native American two-spirit or the hijra of South Asia, the identity has far deeper cultural and historical context.
Published in 2001, post-Pinochet, the novel had the benefit of being radical without actually endangering Lemebel’s life, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t searing, angry power to every page.
My Tender Matador by Pedro Lemebel, translated by Katherine Silver, is out now (Pushkin Press, £10.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
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