Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Trafalgar is a series of linked stories, all narrated by interplanetary merchant, adventurer and lothario Trafalgar Madrano, to sympathetic waiter Marcos who keeps him topped up with strong coffee. Each story sees him journey to a new planet, in which a different set of social, physical or even temporal rules apply - in one the dead continue to nag the living, in another the world lags behind the present day by 500 years. There’s virtually no interest in the science here - Trafalgar’s ship the Clunker is simply a vehicle for example, rather Gorodischer in the philosophical, political or social implications of altering reality by a few degrees. Madrano himself is egotistical, cruel, perhaps deliberately irritating, and would definitely be played by Matt Berry in the TV adaptation. Its a literary curio today, as Argentinian sci-fi from 1979 could perhaps only be, but if you can get into its ornate rhythms then there’s much to enjoy. It’s a reminder that beyond the Anglophone world Lem, the Strugatskys and Gorodischer were writing a very different form of seventies sci-fi.

Another member of Penguin's new Classic Sci-Fi collection, but unfortunately, I was sadly not a fan of this one!

In the cafes and bars of Rosario, Argentina, there are sure to be many tall tales told. But none, perhaps, quite as spectacular as those recounted by Trafalgar Medrano. With a coffeepot and a pack of cigarettes to hand, he will nonchalantly tell you all about his otherworldly adventures: from studying dancing troglodytes on a mucky planet, to befriending the only chaotic man in a perfectly arranged society, to a close shave in 15th century Spain. The things Trafalgar has seen...

Now, I am a lover of weird books and this was definitely a strange one, so I did enjoy its peculiarness! However, I did end up being rather bored. As it is a compilation of short stories, I was expecting each story to be hugely different, but they ended up all feeling very similar. I couldn't really connect to the writing style either, as I found Trafalgar to be quite an irritating character. The prospect of space travel offers so many possibilities as to the places that can be explored and the people that can be met, yet I was disappointed with the tales that Trafalgar told. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I just could not gel with the storytelling.

Whilst it may have not been for me, I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to be introduced to Gorodischer's writing (plus I adore the cover so much!!).

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Trafalgar Medrano is a travelling salesman - with a difference. His tales are told through a number of conversations with friends, which makes this book a little more intimate than it might otherwise have been. "Trafalgar" is a warm and fun book that is quick to read and very enjoyable. One to keep and read over and over for some "comfort reading".

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advance copy to review. This review is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

Trafalgar Medrano is an intergalactic trader and a storyteller, visiting the cafés of Rosario, Argentina, to tell his friends his wild, absurd adventures on planets unknown to others and very far away. 

The novel is constructed out of a series of short stories which could have been written in good old pulp times, and every one is told in dialogue form - the extraordinary cover illustration features the dialogue with a smoking Trafalgar. There are time travel similar encounters with a world nearly identical to ours in 1492, another one with a sex machine, or one where dead people continue living - just to give you an impression of the vast variety. 

Each story stands on its own and it is a wise move not to read all of them in one sitting but one each day. That way you can digest the beautiful, witty, prose with a touch of the literary better. 

Some characteristics of Trafalgar are repetitive - he's not to be rushed but likes to extend his narration under constant drinking of strong coffee. On each planet, he lays a beautiful woman. And every time he trades crazy stuff which is totally irrelevant for the plot.

"your stories are always the same : a bunch of strange things happen to you, you throw yourself, generally successfully, at the prettiest one around there, you
earn piles of dough, and what do you spend it on? On bitter coffee and black cigarettes and Pugliese records."

It is the second time that the book gets published in English language - this time by the new Penguin Classics series. The first bunch of books is set for 6.8.2020, together with a collection by Tiptree, the Hair Carpet Weavers by Eschbach, or Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut. That's an outstanding setup with a good variety of authors, and Gorodischer fits very well in this cadre. 

This novel is not a must read but a prose to cleanse your tongue between digestions of your other favorite authors - it is something different, and so I recommend it.

‘Trafalgar’ is part of a new Science Fiction Classics series from Penguin. The series features an eclectic and interesting range of books, some of which I’ve read but most of which I haven’t. If they’re all as good as ‘Trafalgar’, then fans of sci fi with a more offbeat bent are in for a treat.
The book was first published in Argentina in 1979 and only translated into English in (I think) 2013. It’s a fascinating science fiction book that’s part way between short story collection and novel. It’s weird, inventive, funny and very entertaining. It came as no surprise to me that both Philip K Dick and Kurt Vonnegut get name checks in its pages, Angélica Gorodischer attempts the same blend of pulp SF and intellectual philosophising that they did so well. What’s more, she succeeds in pulling it off as well as either of her influences.
The book involves the titular character, Trafalgar Medrano telling a friend (the narrator) a series of apparently tall tales over cup after cup of coffee. The stories are about his voyages to alien planets, each with a different weirdness going on. On one world he wakes each morning in the different stage of a horrific war, another is a facsimile of Earth circa 1492, and so on.
It’s quite brilliant as science fiction, with a vibrant imagination that draws on the pulps but infuses every page with genuine magic. It’s even better as storytelling though. I found myself feeling like I was sitting with the two men as they discussed Trafalgar’s adventures and amorous encounters with scores of alien women.
Gorodischer manages to achieve that miraculous thing that is a book that speaks to the heart and mind whilst also being massively entertaining. If you’re a fan of colourful alien adventures and fancy something a bit different, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

This is a fantastic science fiction novel. Truly, it was an absolute delight to read. A word of warning, however: this is not your classic sci-fi in the vein of Clarke or Asimov. Angélica Gorodischer has a lot more in common with Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino. The story follows Trafalgar Medrano, a salesman who travels to multiple planets and returns home to tell his fellow citizens what he saw. Trafalgar fills the role in this case as both observer and social critic which lent an interesting slant to the tales he tells. This is enhanced by the slight bent our narrator has. Are his stories 100% true or has he embellished and told what he saw through an objective lens? It's a question that sat at the back of my mind while reading but it did not detract from my enjoyment in the least. I was entranced from the start and after finishing all I can say is it is a crime more of Angélica Gorodischer's fiction has not been translated into English yet.

A curious collection of tall tales told in bars and such, a genre which unassumingly went about its business for much of the 20th century, and if one can point to plenty of non-fantastical versions such as Wodehouse's Mr Mulliner and Oldest Member, it has often ended up in the territory of the fantastical, whether that be Dunsany's Jorkens (who himself changed an awful lot over the course of his six volumes of yarns) or Arthur C Clarke's White Hart pub – the latter an example of the version where each tale has a different teller. Here, though, as with Jorkens or Mulliner, it's always Trafalgar Medrano telling the tales, and though they're told at various locations in what reads as a fairly realistic, mid-to-late 20th century version of the Argentine city of Rosario, they concern his travels in space, as a mid-level salesman. There doesn't seem to be general space travel, and it's never quite clear how much anyone believes him; still, he certainly makes a reasonable living somehow. The problem is more that his yarns tend to get a bit repetitive, as the narrator herself observes: "your stories are always the same: a bunch of strange things happen to you, you throw yourself, generally successfully, at the prettiest one around there, you earn piles of dough" – though she neglects to mention that, as often as not, things then go tits-up and Trafalgar has to scarper in a hurry. Each world has inhabitants who seem broadly human, but have one twist; a matriarchy with religious elements, say, or a world identical to our own but running half a millennium behind, in order to do a time travel story without worrying about paradoxes &c (and where, in the course of derailing human history, Trafalgar himself is mainly worried about coping without coffee and fags). And wherever he ends up, Trafalgar is mainly concerned with making sales and getting laid. This ribald sex-comedy aspect meant I wouldn't necessarily have guessed a female author (and indeed, translator) – not because I don't expect women to write sex, or genre sex, or even sex comedy, but because I'm struggling to think of anything else from a female creator with quite this grubby air of 1970s tawdriness, Confessions Of A Door To Door Salesman - In Space.

There's a certain degree of experiment with the form; sometimes the narrator* interrupts, sometimes she remains silent, in one story she gets the tale at a further remove, via a prim and proper old aunt. With the last two stories, the formula does alter a little more, and we get something more recognisably kin to her best-known work in the Anglophone world, Kalpa Imperial. But it nevertheless seems an odd choice as part of the launch line-up for Penguin's new collection of SF by women, especially when it's alongside real classic stuff like a collection of James Tiptree stories. Still, it has its moments, not least The Gonzalez Family's Fight For A Better World. This portrait of a planet without amenities or innovation, where the living are constantly harried by angry, resentful dead who won't lie down, and can't attack, but sure as blazes can nag and prevent any fun, is an unwelcome foreshadowing of what post-COVID, post-Brexit Britain is going to look like. Well, except that I doubt our home cooking will be so good.

*Itself a curious term when a narrator is mainly a frame for someone else's narration, which makes up the story proper, but I'm not aware of another.

(Netgalley ARC)

An interesting translation from a giant of Argentinian writing - Trafalgar is actually quite a fun selection of unpreposessing sci-fi fantasy short stories. Named after its protagonist, Trafalgar Medrano, each story is framed in a similar fashion, the author meets Trafalgar (usually at the local club or coffee shop), and Trafalgar then spills a far fetched tale about his galactic adventures over about ten coffees. Trafalgar is an intergalactic spiv - buying and selling goods across a galaxy no-one else seems to have access to, but there is a matter of fact tall tale aspect to it - which also matches with the kind of story being told. They are planets of matriarchs, or 1492 Spain, or places where ghosts hang around playing trick on everyone, there is little science and Gorodischer isn't interested in the science. Its akin to Gulliver's Travels via Kurt Vonnegut (she admits the Vonnegut in one of the middle stories). Its fun, diverting and well written (and translated). But the stories do a get a bit samey, and the "is it truth / is it bullshit / there are no stakes" aspect of the tall tales doesn't do it too many favours. I assume these are collected tales written over a long period and were probably best encountered excitedly in a magazine aver couple of years. A lovely thing to discover, but possibly not how it was originally designed.

[NetGalley ARC]