Bøger af Alejandro Zambra

Aunque este singular e inclasificable libro de Alejandro Zambra se llama Literatura infantil, conviene advertir que incluye un magnâifico cuento que gira en torno al lenguaje grosero y un relato directamente lisâergico en que un hombre intenta, en pleno viaje terapâeutico de hongos, volver a aprender el dificilâisimo arte de gatear.

Bonsai is the story of Julio and Emilia, two young Chilean students who, seeking truth in great literature, find each other instead. Like all young couples, they lie to each other, revise themselves, and try new identities on for size, observing and analyzing their love story as if it's one of the great novels they both pretend to have read. As they shadow each other throughout their young adulthoods, falling together and drifting apart, Zambra spins a formally innovative, metafictional tale that brilliantly explores the relationship among love, art, and memory.

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE”“A tender and funny story about love, family and the peculiar position of being a stepparent…[Chilean Poet] broadens the author’s scope and quite likely his international reputation.” —Los Angeles Times“Zambra [is] one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation.” —The New York Review of Books  “Zambra's books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own.” —Juan Vidal, NPR.org A writer of “startling talent” (The New York Times Book Review), Alejandro Zambra returns with his most substantial work yet: a story of fathers and sons, ambition and failure, and what it means to make a familyAfter a chance encounter at a Santiago nightclub, aspiring poet Gonzalo reunites with his first love, Carla. Though their desire for each other is still intact, much has changed: among other things, Carla now has a six-year-old son, Vicente. Soon the three form a happy sort-of family—a stepfamily, though no such word exists in their language. Eventually, their ambitions pull the lovers in different directions—in Gonzalo’s case, all the way to New York. Though Gonzalo takes his books when he goes, still, Vicente inherits his ex-stepfather’s love of poetry. When, at eighteen, Vicente meets Pru, an American journalist literally and figuratively lost in Santiago, he encourages her to write about Chilean poets—not the famous, dead kind, your Nerudas or Mistrals or Bolaños, but rather the living, striving, everyday ones. Pru’s research leads her into this eccentric community—another kind of family, dysfunctional but ultimately loving. Will it also lead Vicente and Gonzalo back to each other? In Chilean Poet, Alejandro Zambra chronicles with enormous tenderness and insight the small moments—sexy, absurd, painful, sweet, profound—that make up our personal histories. Exploring how we choose our families and how we betray them, and what it means to be a man in relationships—a partner, father, stepfather, teacher, lover, writer, and friend—it is a bold and brilliant new work by one of the most important writers of our time.

"The first story collection by the internationally celebrated writer Alejandro Zambra, a book that "burn[s] brighter than most anything we'd call exceptional, yesterday or today and in any language" (NPR)-now reissued by Penguin In this beloved and critically acclaimed collection, Alejandro Zambra offers eleven stories that capture life in Chile before and after Pinochet, a catalog of the peculiar and powerful associations that shape our relationships, our identities, and our lives. The effect is that of a novel in eleven parts, each one uncannily captivating, formerly residing in an innocuous desktop folder titled "My Documents." Intimate and playful, inventive and profound, My Documents is one of Zambra's finest achievements: a book that exudes boundless wit and impeccable style and that is a testament to the necessity of literature even-and especially-in times of political crisis"--

The second novel by the internationally celebrated writer Alejandro Zambra, a 'short and strikingly original' (New Yorker) book about the stories we spin for ourselves and our loved ones - now published in the UK for the first time by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Condenado a la seriedad y a la impostura, Julio, el silencioso protagonista de este libro, acaba convenciâendose de que es mejor encerrarse en su cuarto a observar el crecimiento de un bonsâai que vagar por los incâomodos caminos de la literatura. Este relato elâiptico y vertiginoso estâa marcado por la inquietante desapariciâon de una mujer. Jorge Luis Borges aconsejaba escribir como si se estuviera redactando el resumen de una obra ya escrita. Eso es lo que ha hecho Alejandro Zambra en este libro que, del mismo modo que un bonsâai no es un âarbol, mâas que una novela corta o un relato largo es una novelaresumen o, justamente, una novelabonsâai. Bonsâai supone el brillante debut narrativo del joven chileno Alejandro Zambra, poeta y crâitico literario.

Verâonica tarda, Verâonica se demora inexplicablemente y el libro sigue hasta que ella regrese o hasta que Juliâan estâe seguro de que ya no volverâa. De eso va La vida privada de los âarboles: de la noche larga y tal vez definitiva que Juliâan pasa esperando que su mujer regrese, que el libro termine. Hacia el final de esta, la segunda novela de Alejandro Zambra, Juliâan desea ser una voz en off, un coleccionista de historias ajenas; quiere escribir y no ser escrito, pero esperar es dejarse escribir: esperar es seguir una constante deriva de imâagenes. Entonces la historia comienza mucho antes de esa noche âultima, tal vez una tarde de 1984, con la escena de un niäno mirando televisiâon. Y termina con las inevitables conjeturas sobre la vida de Daniela, la hija de Verâonica, a los veinte, a los veinticinco, a los treinta aänos, cuando ha pasado mucho tiempo desde que su padrastro le contaba historias sobre los âarboles.ÅPor quâe leer y escribir libros en un mundo a punto de quebrarse? Esta pregunta ronda cada pâagina de La vida privada de los âarboles, una novela que vino a confirmar a Alejandro Zambra como uno de los escritores mâas interesantes de las nuevas generaciones; una novela que (S0 (Bnos plantea una lâinea argumental delgada y breve, detrâas de la cual se pue den visualizar ramificaciones espesas como en un espejismo de bosques (S1 (B: lo dice Margarita Garcâia Robayo en el epâilogo a esta nueva ediciâon, un epâilogo que es la crâonica del descubrimiento que aâun aguarda a quien se acerque a las pâaginas de este (S0 (Bpequeäno libro enorme (S1 (B. (S0 (BEn La vida privada de los âarboles encontrâe la constataciâon de lo que sospechaba que podâia ofrecernos la escritura mâas allâa de la escritura... Por fin estaba frente a un autor que escribâia para llegar a ese lugar que no estâa hecho de palabras. Y te llevaba con âel. No conozco un talento mayor. Ni en la literatura ni en la vida (S1 (B(Del epâilogo de Margarita Garcâia Robayo). (S0 (BLa vida privada de los âarboles es un pequeäno clâasico de la literatura latinoamericana -pequeäno por su tamaäno, que no por su hondura y alcance. Los libros como este nos recuerdan que la experiencia de la lectura puede seguir siendo una experiencia ligada de manera profunda a nuestra vida y no una mera sucesiâon de minutos y frases concatenados por una mente ajena (S1 (B(Valeria Luiselli).

A brilliant novel from "the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction" (Marcela Valdes, The Nation)Alejandro Zambra's Ways of Going Home begins with an earthquake, seen through the eyes of an unnamed nine-year-old boy who lives in an undistinguished middle-class housing development in a suburb of Santiago, Chile. When the neighbors camp out overnight, the protagonist gets his first glimpse of Claudia, an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle Raúl. In the second section, the protagonist is the writer of the story begun in the first section. His father is a man of few words who claims to be apolitical but who quietly sympathized-to what degree, the author isn't sure-with the Pinochet regime. His reflections on the progress of the novel and on his own life-which is strikingly similar to the life of his novel's protagonist-expose the raw suture of fiction and reality. Ways of Going Home switches between author and character, past and present, reflecting with melancholy and rage on the history of a nation and on a generation born too late-the generation which, as the author-narrator puts it, learned to read and write while their parents became accomplices or victims. It is the most personal novel to date from Zambra, the most important Chilean author since Roberto Bolaño.

"Veronica is late, and Juliâan is increasingly convinced she won't ever come home. To pass the time, he improvises a story about trees to coax his stepdaughter, Daniela, to sleep. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Juliâan finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life-of their lives together"--

Over the course of the chronicles and literary essays that make up this volume, Alejandro Zambra outlines his own particular theory of reading.

MY DOCUMENTS is the latest work from Alejandro Zambra, the award-winning Chilean writer whose first novel was heralded as the dawn of a new era in Chilean literature. MY DOCUMENTS is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.

"e;Brilliant, innovative, beautiful."e;The Guardian"e;Dazzling...a work of parody, but also of poetry."e;The New York Times Book ReviewNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, THE GUARDIAN, AND THE IRISH TIMES';Latin America's new literary star' (The New Yorker), Alejandro Zambra is celebrated around the world for his strikingly original, slyly funny, daringly unconventional fiction. Now, at the height of his powers, Zambra returns with his most audaciously brilliant book yet.Written in the form of a standardized test, Multiple Choice invites the reader to respond to virtuoso language exercises and short narrative passages through multiple-choice questions that are thought-provoking, usually unanswerable, and often absurd. It offers a new kind of reading experience, one in which the reader participates directly in the creation of meaning, and the nature of storytelling itself is called into question. At once funny, poignant, and political, Multiple Choice is about love and family, authoritarianism and its legacies, and the conviction that, rather than learning to think for ourselves, we are trained to obey and repeat. Serious in its literary ambition and playful in its execution, it confirms Alejandro Zambra as one of the most important writers working in any language.NAMEDABEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE MILLIONS, VOX, LIT HUB, THE BBC, THE GUARDIANAND PUREWOW

Med et borende blik og en afdæmpet ironisk distance til selv den alvorligste sag har Zambra spundet elleve meget forskellige og samtidig tæt forbundne noveller over livet i en chilensk forstad fra begyndelsen af 80'erne og frem.Mine dokumenter er fortællingen om at huske tilbage, om at kortlægge hukommelsen på en gammel Olympia, om at vokse op under Pinochets diktatur i et middelklassekvarter i Santiago de Chile. Om at få sin første computer og opdage, at skriften pludselig bliver en anden. Om menneskeskæbner og om relationer eller ikkerelationer mellem slægtninge, venner, par, voksne og børn.

A rising star of Latin American literature, and one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists