Fitzcarraldo scoops two by 'radical thinker' Preciado

Fitzcarraldo Editions is to publish two books, Can the Monster Speak? Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts and Virus & Revolution, by philosopher and curator Paul B Preciado. 

The publisher acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to the works from Preciado's agent, María Lynch at Casanovas & Lynch.

In November 2019, Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne’s annual conference in Paris. His talk, calling for a radical transformation of psychological and psychoanalytic discourse and practices, caused "a veritable outcry among the assembly, and Preciado was heckled and booed and unable to finish". The lecture, filmed on smartphones, ended up published online, where fragments were transcribed, translated and published "with no regard for exactitude", the publisher has stated.

In June 2021, Can the Monster Speak? Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts will be published in a English translation by Frank Wynne, with Semiotext publishing in North America.

Virus & Revolution takes the global pandemic as a starting point for a reflection on the times and "epistemological shift" society is experiencing. Blending memoir and theory, Preciado's book engages with "body politics, border policies, pharmacopornography, necropolitics, patriarchy, capital colonialism and neoliberal flights, arguing, with courage and conviction, for a planetary revolution of all living beings against the norm", according to the publisher. Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish in autumn 2022, simultaneously with Graywolf Press in North America.

Publisher Jacques Testard said: "It's very exciting that Paul B Preciado has committed to two more books with Fitzcarraldo Editions. He is a visionary, one of the most original and radical thinkers of our time."