When Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky released his surrealist masterworks El Topo and The Holy Mountain in the 1970s, he revolutionized cinema and launched the “midnight movie” phenomenon. A giant not just in the film world but also in theatre, comics, and the Tarot, Jodorowsky has influenced artists as diverse as John Lennon, Marina Abramović and Kanye West.

In 2014, he starred in the acclaimed documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune and released his first film in 23 years, The Dance of Reality, an autobiographical picture that mines the social and political terrain of his childhood in pre-war Chile. But the often-reclusive director did not disappear entirely during that two-decade absence from the screen. In fact, Jodorowsky was busy enhancing his reputation as a major Latin American novelist, revered everywhere from Mexico to Argentina. Finally, Restless Books is bringing those important works to the English-speaking world, beginning with his epic family saga, Where the Bird Sings Best.

This remarkable book has been compared to Marquéz’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in its imaginative scope and historical sweep. The story of the Jodorowskys’ emigration to Chile from the Ukraine, Where the Bird Sings Best explores family legends, the turmoil of history, Jewish philosophy, political violence, mysticism, passion, lust, loss, and the joyful absurdity of everyday life. A sui generis epic, Jodorowsky’s novel expands the classic immigration story to mythic proportions.

REVIEWS

“This epic family saga, reminiscent of Gabriel García Márquez's Cien anos de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) in structure and breadth, reads at a breakneck pace. Though ostensibly a novelization of the author's own family history, it is a raucous carnival of the surreal, mystical, and grotesque....It weaves together Jewish philosophy, passion, humor, Tarot, ballet, circuses, natural disasters, spectacular suicides, lion tamers, knife throwers, Catholic devotion, farmers, betrayals, prostitutes, leftist politics, political violence, and the ghost of a wise rabbi who follows the family from the Old World to the New.”
—Publishers Weekly

"I divide the world into two categories: the originals, and the ones who follow. The originals are the people looking differently, who take the simple elements of everyday life and make miracles. And for me, Alejandro, you are the one original."
—Marina Abramović

Alejandro Jodorowsky is a Chilean-French filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, musician, comics writer, and spiritual guru, best known for his avant-garde films including Fando and Lis (1968), El Topo(1970)—which became a cult hit and inaugurated the “midnight movie” phenomenon—The Holy Mountain (1973), and Santa Sangre (1989). As is documented in the recent film Jodorowsky’s Dune, in 1975 he began to work on a colossal adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune—which was to star Orson Welles and Salvador Dalí and to be scored by Pink Floyd—but was never made (a later version was filmed by David Lynch). Recently, after 23 years away from the screen, Jodorowsky released his autobiographical film The Dance of Reality, about growing up in a Chilean mining town. Jodorowsky himself, his wife Valerie, and his sons Brontis, Axel, and Adan have all appeared in his films.

A circus clown and a puppeteer in his youth, Alejandro Jodorowsky left for Paris at the age of 23 to study mime with Marcel Marceau. He also befriended the surrealists Roland Topor and Fernando Arrabal, and in 1962 these three created the "Panic Movement" in homage to the mythical god Pan. He became a specialist in the art of the Tarot and prolific author of novels, poetry, short stories, essays, works on the Tarot and “psychomagic” healing, and over thirty successful comic books, working with such highly regarded comic book artists as Moebius and Bess. Restless Books will publish the first English translations of three of his best known books: Donde mejor canta un pájaro (Where the Bird Sings Best), El niño del jueves negro (The Son of Black Thursday), and Albina y los hombres perro (Albina and the Dog Men).