Sigilo publishing house lands in the country

▲ Covers of the label's new releases catalog. Photo courtesy of Sigilo Publishing.

Daniel López Aguilar

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, August 3, 2025, p. 2

Founded in 2014 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by Maximiliano Papandrea, and based in Madrid since 2018 under Adam Blumenthal, the independent publishing house Sigilo is now available in Mexican bookstores for the first time.

We are very excited to be in Mexico , said Blumenthal, editor and translator, in an interview with La Jornada .

This country is a very important cultural hub for us. We read its literature and travel frequently. We can finally make our titles available to this audience, something we've been hoping for for some time.

Eleven years after its creation, the imprint has established itself in the independent world with a catalog of more than 70 titles, including novels, essays, chronicles, poetry, contemporary comics, illustrated books, and object books.

Our selection criteria is very personal. It stems from the reading experience of those of us who work at the publishing house and the dialogues the titles generate with each other , added Blumenthal (Tel Aviv, 1985).

We publish first works and continue to develop their authors. To a lesser extent, we publish established voices. This diverse mix is part of our identity.

The catalogue includes names such as Dolores Reyes, Valeria Luiselli, Juan Cárdenas, Adrián Dárgelos, Jesse Ball, María Luque, Virginia Higa and Salomé Esper.

For Blumenthal, translating something written in another language into Spanish is one of the project's core pillars. We collaborate with a select group of translators. We want each text to reach the reader in the best possible condition. That's why the translator's name appears on the cover .

As part of the catalog now available in Mexico, we find The Peregrine by J.A. Baker, a classic of nature literature. Originally published in 1967 and translated into Spanish for the first time by Marcelo Cohen, the book summarizes 10 years of peregrine falcon observations in eastern England.

Baker followed birds day after day, from autumn to spring, in flight, hunting, and resting, until he blended his voice with that of the animal. For decades, the author remained almost a literary ghost: he didn't attend university and published only two books.

“My partner Maxi (Papandrea) learned about The Pilgrim on the recommendation of Chilean writer Benjamín Labatut,” Blumenthal recalled.

We later learned that it was also Werner Herzog's favorite book, which he recommended to his film students. Maxi read it and fell in love with it. Marcelo Cohen was also interested in translating it, and this Spanish version was born.

▲ Adam Blumenthal, director of Sigilo, an independent publishing house focused on translation. Photo courtesy of Isabel Wagemann

In a different vein, Los sorrentinos , by Argentine Virginia Higa, reconstructs the story of a family that, more than a century ago, left Sorrento and settled in Mar del Plata, where they invented one of the country's most iconic pastas: sorrentinos.

Higa describes with humor and precision the after-dinner conversations, loves, and losses of a clan that spans generations.

Virginia's writing seems simple, but it achieves the most difficult thing: being transparent and, at the same time, complex , Blumenthal said. She has a very fine ear for the intimate language of families and transforms those voices into literature .

These two titles join Jesse Ball's When the Silence Began , a fiction that explores a tragic case known as the Naruto Disappearances in Japan in 1977, along with works by María Luque, Salomé Esper, Dolores Reyes and Valeria Luiselli.

To come

Additionally, upcoming publications have been announced: Pudding from Heaven by María Luque; Come Dance with Me by Russell Hoban, a collection of short stories by Salomé Esper; Private Rites by Julia Armfield, a speculative reworking of King Lear focusing on three sisters navigating queer love and loss in a flooded world; and For Four Crazy Days by María Moreno, a collection of chronicles, columns, and essays from different eras.

Sigilo plans to strengthen its ties with the Mexican reading community. We want to generate as many contacts as possible. It's about getting titles on the shelves; we also seek to mobilize our authors to participate in fairs and the bookstore circuit. We plan to organize book clubs and presentations , the publisher stated.

"The experience of developing the project from Buenos Aires and Madrid has defined the publisher's profile, which now adds a third point to its map. Our main focus is Latin American literature."

"It's the pulse that Maximiliano and I share, and much of what we do, even in Spain. Of course, we edit voices from other regions, but Latin America is the center of gravity.

The Sigilo titles are now available in bookstores throughout Mexico. We hope that book lovers will take the opportunity to explore these offerings. Each work is carefully edited and presented to the public as such.