When Emil Fleischer, the Yiddish actor, left the Lager after a two-year period in which he suffered privations nobody can ever anticipate, his first thought was to find a decent bed to sleep in. Despite the real blessing it was to be alive, his second thought was to travel back to see a place he dea…
The Count
Leandro Sarmatz
Translated by Peter Bush
‘There was a touch of magic in surviving all that.’
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What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know? What made him do what he did? Could it have all been for an ice cream bar, really? Will any of us ever know?
Leandro Sarmatz
Leandro Sarmatz was born in Porto Alegre and has lived in São Paulo since 2001. He is currently an editor at the publishing house Companhia das Letras. Sarmatz is the author of the play Mães e sogras (2000), the collection of poetry Logocausto (2009) and the short-story collection Uma fome (2010). ‘The Count’ (‘O Conde’) is taken from Uma fome.
More about the author →Translated by Peter Bush
Peter Bush is a freelance translator living in Barcelona. His translations from Portuguese include Turbulence by Chico Buarque and Equator by Miguel Sousa Tavares, which was awarded the Calouste Gulbenkian Prize for Portuguese Translation. Recently he has translated Ramón del Valle-Inclán's Tyrant Banderas from Spanish, and Teresa Solana's The Sound of One Hand Clapping and Quim Monzo's A Thousand Morons from Catalan.
More about the translator →