{"id":16177,"date":"2026-02-26T15:52:52","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T21:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/?post_type=product&p=16177"},"modified":"2026-02-26T17:26:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T23:26:44","slug":"saga","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.lavenderink.org\/site\/shop\/saga\/","title":{"rendered":"Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roberto Bal\u00f2<\/a><\/h1>\n

Translated by Robert Fitterman<\/a><\/h2>\n

Saga<\/h3>\n

ISBN: 9781956921564 (pbk.)<\/p>\n

(Shipping March 10, 2026)<\/p>\n

\n

Roberto Bal\u00f2’s Saga<\/i> is a book-length serial poem that reimagines The Odyssey<\/i> from the vantage point of outer space. Science-fiction, popular culture, space opera, and classical literature weave through the book, as its minimal form intensifies the introspection and longing of the hero’s space travel: a parallel with Odysseus\u2019 journey by sea.<\/p>\n

\n

In Saga<\/i>, Roberto Bal\u00f2’s first collection to be translated into English, not even the universe escapes banality and Odysseus is a Luke Skywalker-type ruminating at interstellar dive bars that, like most watering holes, are not devoid of people behaving like jackasses. Moments of disarming lyric intensity are plentiful. Stars are placebos for Penny, and while there\u2019s \u201cnothing new on the stellar front,\u201d everything about this saga is at once enchantingly familiar and refreshingly unexpected. Fitterman\u2019s colloquial translations strike the perfect pitch, and all is hunky-dory.
\n—M\u00f3nica de la Torre<\/b><\/p>\n

In this tongue-in-cheek yet poignant mashup of The Odyssey, Star Wars, Star Trek, 2001,<\/i> and sundry sci-fi spinoffs, Roberto Bal\u00f2 deconstructs masculinist tropes and affects, delivering a blistering sendup of late-Capitalism\u2019s sentimental desires and ultimately futile hopes for salvation in the stars. Bal\u00f2\u2019s wistfully parodic space odyssey comes to us in English through poet Robert Fitterman\u2019s subtle ear in the times of SpaceX and the techno-futurist daydream-wager on the exploration–and exploitation–of the last frontier. Space travel, it turns out, is \u201cstill a prison,\u201d while back on planet Earth, in Ithaca, Penelope is still waiting for her voyager to grow up.
\n—Matvei Yankelevich<\/b><\/p>\n

Nobody (Nessuno) is travelling: he searches for a meaning in the curvature of time, he chases crumbs of myth every day in his spaceship, and asks himself questions about the nature of being. This local space hero is often hovering over a black hole, looking for holograms of a you who is never left but from which one continues to leave: \u201cuseless to leave, useless to stay\u201d. Epos and pop merge when one enters the hyperspace of nostalgia for places never seen where time is reset and everything is possible in its impossibility.
\n—Elisa Biagini<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roberto Bal\u00f2<\/a>
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