The Visible Unseen
The Visible Unseen
By Andrea Chapela
Translated from the Spanish by Kelsi Vanada
Winner of the José Luis Martinez National Prize
Andrea Chapela, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists of 2021, breaks down literary and scientific conventions in this prize-winning collection of experimental essays exploring the properties and poetics of glass, mirrors, and light as a means of understanding the self.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632063526
Publication date: Oct 11, 2022
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About the Book
In powerful, formally inventive essays, The Visible Unseen disrupts the purported cultural divide between science and the arts. As both a chemist and an award-winning author, Chapela zeros in on the literary metaphors buried in the facts and figures of her scientific observations. Through questioning scientific conundrums that lie beyond the limits of human perception, she winds up putting herself under the microscope as well.
While considering the technical definition of glass as a liquid or a solid, Chapela stumbles upon a framework for understanding the in-between-ness of her own life. Turning her focus toward mirrors, she finds metaphors for our cultural obsession with self-image in the physics and chemistry of reflection. And as she compiles a history of the scientific study of light, she comes to a conclusion: that the purpose of description—be it scientific or literary—can never be to define reality, only to confirm our perception of it. Lyrical, introspective, and methodical, The Visible Unseen constructs a startling new perspective from which to examine ourselves and the ways we create meaning.
PRAISE FOR THE VISIBLE UNSEEN
“Philosophical meditations graced by radiant prose.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“The Visible Unseen is a wonderful category-defying book. Andrea Chapela writes with mathematical elegance, poetical precision, and wit. Her intimate family vignettes blend with a Borgesian knowledge and regard for science. This lucid, beautiful book is an experiment where one eye sees with the vision of a philosopher and the other sees with the vision of a physicist, a biologist, and a chemist. The Visible Unseen is a lyrical laboratory of thinking and feeling. It’s an uncanny memoir of inner and outer perceptions.”
—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and How To Be Drawn
“Andrea Chapela lends us her eyes—the clear, intimate gaze of a chemist and writer—to help us delve into the matter that we are made of and the mysteries surrounding us. Literature and science merge in the substance of these essays—these wise, beautiful, soulful, astonishing experiments.”
—Jazmina Barrera, author of On Lighthouses and Linea Nigra
“A gimlet-eyed meditation on the dovetailing of science, the self, and written expression, The Visible Unseen jolted me. Andrea Chapela is an exquisite new voice in the hands of a superlative translator.”
—Julia Sanches, award-winning translator of Migratory Birds, Eartheater, and Permafrost
“Andrea Chapela has written a captivating reverie about art and science, an experiment in seeing science through the lens of poetry. She meanders with fluid curiosity through history and experience, her fascination with glass, mirrors, and light requiring her to dwell in the beauty of lyric uncertainty. The three essays, translated gracefully by Kelsi Vanada, each take formal inspiration from the materials they study. The book seems a fusing of the sensibilities of lyric essayist Maggie Nelson and Czech immunologist Miroslav Holub. A fascinating read.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress
“Art and science definitely mix—don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. . . . Many of the essays are experimental in form, so get ready for a challenging, thought-provoking tumble into the mysteries of the human heart and the physical world.”
—Laura Sackton, Book Riot
About the Author
© Alván Pardo
Andrea Chapela (Mexico City, 1990) has a degree in chemistry from the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and an MFA in Spanish Creative Writing from the University of Iowa. The four books of her saga Vâudïz were published between 2008 and 2015 by the publishing house Urano. In 2016, she was awarded a Jóvenes Creadores grant for a science fiction short story collection. In September 2017, she was awarded a grant by the Spanish government to live and work for two years in Madrid’s famed Residencia de Estudiantes. In 2019, she received the Gilberto Owen National Prize for Literature in Mexico for the book Ansibles, perfiladores y otras máquinas de ingenio [Ansibles, Profilers, and Other Ingenious Machines]. In the same year, her Grados de miopía (The Visible Unseen) won the National Joven José Luis Martínez Essay Prize in Mexico for essays by young writers. The book is a lyrical essay, published by Tierra Adentro in fall 2019. Her stories have been published in the journals Tierra Adentro, Este País, and in various anthologies. In English translation, her publications include poems in The Brooklyn Rail InTranslation and an essay in Tupelo Quarterly. Andrea was named one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists in 2021. She is represented by Indent Literary Agency.
About the translator
© Patrick Ploschnitzki
Kelsi Vanada is a poet and translator from Spanish and Swedish. Her book-length translations include Damascus, Atlantis: Selected Poems by Marie Silkeberg (Terra Nova Press, 2021), which was longlisted for the 2022 PEN Poetry in Translation Award; as well as Into Muteness by Sergio Espinosa (Veliz Books, 2020) and The Eligible Age by Berta García Faet (Song Bridge Press, 2018). Her translations of Mexican writer Andrea Chapela’s work have previously appeared in Granta 155: Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists 2, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Brooklyn Rail InTranslation. She published Rare Earth, a chapbook of original poems, in 2020 (Finishing Line Press).
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in Poetry, Kelsi got her start as a literary translator at the International Writing Program in Iowa City and went on to get an MFA Literary Translation from the University of Iowa. Among her awards are the 2021 John Dryden Translation Award longlist and the 2018 American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize. Kelsi actively publishes reviews of literature in translation to build a readership for translated work, and she designs and teaches workshops on literary translation and reviewing, including for the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Catapult, and the Kenyon Review. Since 2018, Kelsi has worked as Program Manager of the American Literary Translators Association in Tucson, Arizona.
Book Details
Paperback ISBN: 9781632063526 • $20.00
eBook ISBN: 9781632063533
Publication date: Oct 11, 2022
5" x 7.125" • 160 pages
Nonfiction—Essays / Science / Personal / Mexican
Territory: World English, Audio