MARIO BELLATIN discusses his new novel JACOB THE MUTANT, together with DAVID SHOOK AND JACOB STEINBERG

Jacob The Mutant (Phoneme Media)

 Conceived of as a set of fragmentary manuscripts from an unpublished Joseph Roth novel, Mario Bellatin's Jacob the Mutant is a novella in a perpetual state of transformation--a story about a man named Jacob, an ersatz rabbi and the owner of a roadside tavern. But when reality shifts, so does Jacob, mutating into another person entirely, while the novella mutates into another story. Cleverly translated by Jacob Steinberg, this Phoneme Media edition of a new novel by one of Mexico's most notorious and celebrated writers includes a translator's afterword and explanatory maps by illustrator Zsu Szkurka.

Praise for Mario Bellatin:

"Everyone talks about inventing their own language, but Mario Bellatin actually does it." --Francisco Goldman

Mexican writer Mario Bellatin has published dozens of novels with major and minor publishing houses throughout Latin America, Europe, and the United States, including Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, published in 2014 by Phoneme Media. A Practicing Sufi, Bellatin has won many international prizes, including, most recently, Cuba's 2015 José María Arguedas Prize.

David Shook has translated Mario Bellatin's Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction, and The Large Glass: Three Autobiographies, forthcoming from Phoneme Media in December. He and Bellatin have collaborated to make films on three continents. Shook's own poetry has been nominated for the Forward Prize and long-listed for the International Dylan Thomas Prize. 

Jacob Steinberg was born in Stony Brook, New York, in 1989. A poet, translator, and critic, his publications includeMagulladón and Ante ti se arrodilla mi silencio. As a translator he has worked with Sam Pink, Luna Miguel, and Mario Bellatin, among others. Scrambler Books released his first English-language collection, Before You Kneels My Silence, as well as the first volume of his translations of contemporary Argentine poet Cecilia Pavón. He currently lives in New York.