My Documents - Softcover

Zambra, Alejandro

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099297478X ISBN 13: 9780992974787

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2015

Synopsis

Archived in the 'My Documents' folder on award-winning Chilean author Alejandro Zambra's desktop are eleven stories that together form a cartography of contemporary solitude. Whether chronicling the attempts of a migraine-afflicted writer to quit smoking or the loneliness of the call-centre worker, the life of a personal computer or the return of a mercurial godson, this novel in fragments evokes the disenchantments of youth and the disillusions of maturity in a Chilean society still troubled by its recent past. Written with the author's trademark irony and precision, humour and melancholy, My Documents is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.

About this title

About the Author

Alejandro Zambra is a Chilean writer, poet, and critic. He currently teaches literature at the Diego Portales University in Santiago. His first novel, Bonsai was awarded Chile's Literary Critics' Award for Best Novel. He is also the author of The Private Lives of Trees and Ways of Going Home, which won the Altazor prize and the National Council Prize for Books, both for the best Chilean novel. He was selected as one of the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists by Granta in 2010. Megan McDowell has translated many modern and contemporary South American authors, including Alejandro Zambra, Arturo Fontaine, Carlos Busqued, Alvaro Bisama and Juan Emar. Her translations have been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders, Mandorla, and Vice, among others. She lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

Review

'These stories are graceful, grave, comical, disabused. I guess what I mean is: My Documents represents a new form. When I think about Alejandro Zambra, I feel happy for the future of fiction.' - Adam Thrilwell, author of Lurid and Cute 'Alejandro Zambra's My Documents is also his best: an eclectic, disconcerting, at times harrowing read. His voice is unique, honest and raw, and there is poetry on every page. Zambra's fiction doubles as a kind of personal history, full of anguish, humour and verve. A truly beautiful book.' - Daniel Alarcon, author of At Night We Walk in Circles 'Zambra is the author of small classics - short in length, but enormous in every other way. My Documents elevates him to an entirely new level.' - Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd 'I read all of Alejandro Zambra's novels back-to-back because they were such good company. His books are like a phone call in the middle of the night from an old friend, and afterward, I missed the charming and funny voice on the other end, with its strange and beautiful stories.' - Nicole Krauss, author of Great House 'Ways of Going Home elevates Zambra to the status of living writers we "simply must read", like Denis Johnson, Lydia Davis, and Mary Gaitskill. His voice is as natural and intimate as Roberto Bolano's, an obvious but healthy influence, and his subjects - love, memory, death, and guilt - are as big as he can find.' - Clancy Martin, author of Love and Lies 'The "last truly great book" I read has to be Alejandro Zambra's Bonsai. A subtle, eerie, ultimately wrenching account of failed young love in Chile among the kind of smartypant set who pillow-talk about the importance of Proust - A total knockout.' - Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Edition details

• Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 099297478X
• ISBN 13: 9780992974787
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 223