u/perrolazarillo

I’ll be leaving Uruguay soon (next stop: Buenos Aires), however, I had a great time at the 48th Feria International Del Libro de Montevideo!

One of the highlights for me was learning so much more about Uruguayan literature, which until recently was a real gap in my knowledge of Latin American literature.

In particular, I got acquainted with some of the independent presses based out of Montevideo and even got to meet some of the writers whose books I bought, including the world-renowned Fernanda Trías!

Nevertheless, I was just as excited to meet Gonzalo Baz, Dani Olivar, and Tamara Silva Bernaschina, notable contemporary Uruguayan writers who gifted me a few moments of their time! Thank you all for your warmth, patience, and willingness to speak with me at FIL!

OK, here’s my Uruguayan independent-press haul:

LA CIUDAD by Mario Levrero — Criatura Editora

GURISAS CHICAS by Dani Olivar — Criatura Editora

ANIMALES QUE VUELVEN by Gonzalo Baz — Pez en el Hielo

LOS AHOGADOS by Emanuel Bremermann — Pez en el Hielo

TEMPORADA DE BALLENAS by Tamara Silva Bernaschina — Estuario Editora

NO SOÑARÁS FLORES by Fernanda Trías — Casa Editorial HUM

Has anyone here read any of these authors? Aside from Trías, they are all new to me, but I’m excited to dive into each one of these books… sooner or later!

Aside from the classics like Mario Benedetti, Juan Carlos Onetti, Cristina Peri Rossi, and Eduardo Galeano, which other Uruguayan writers should I have on my radar?

Ramiro Sanchiz was also kind enough to spend some of his time chatting with me, and I picked up a couple of his books (thanks for signing them, Ramiro!), albeit not from Uruguayan presses, and I’m especially excited to check out LAS IMITACIONES, which was just rereleased in a special tenth-anniversary edition by Frontal Editora out of Buenos Aires.

Some Uruguayan sleepers I scored: EL FURGÓN DE LOS LOCOS by Carlos Liscano and EL GUARDESPALDAS Y OTROS CUENTOS by Nelson Marra.

Finally, I’m trying to decide if I should try to make room in my suitcase for the massive tome that is LAS CENIZAS DEL CÓNDOR by Fernando Butazzoni… has anyone here read it? If so, would you please be so kind as to tell me your thoughts? Thanks in advance!

Peace!

Is there any news related to Latin American literature that you wish to share with the community?

Are you aware of any new book releases in the field of Latin American literature?

Is there a literary event that you’d like to promote?

Do you have any other pertinent information worth sharing here?

Thanks in advance!

**********

The main work of "latamlit" to be released in the month of October that is on my radar is I’m Still Here by Marcelo Rubens Paiva (translated by Alison Entrekin and Daniel Hahn), which is to be published by Charco Press.

Have you perhaps seen Walter Salles’ film by the same name? I’d highly recommend it along with Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent!

Anyway, here’s Charco’s synopsis of the book:

>When Marcelo Rubens Paiva was 11 years old, his father was tortured to death by the Brazilian dictatorship. 25 years later, his mother, Eunice, helped usher into law a way for the families of the regime’s victims to finally have their deaths formally acknowledged, and allow them to seek compensation. In between, the unspooling of Brazilian democracy, and then the terrors and everydayness of life under the dictatorship, are where Paiva discovers his mother, and himself.

>Eunice Paiva — who always preferred reading a novel to cavorting with her children, who was charming, and glamorous, and who never let anyone see her cry — responded to the shock of her widowhood by going back to law school in her 40s while raising five children alone, and then becoming a heroic advocate for Brazil’s indigenous people. For her only son, his father’s death catapulted him from a childhood spent playing soccer on the beach in Rio into the rest of his life, one characterized by the awe, and confusion, of a young man, still in mourning, watching his relentless, brilliant mother plunge their family ever forward. 

>I’m Still Here is the wry, deeply evocative, and endlessly compassionate story of how a family went from raucous, sun-soaked relative innocence to a deep and abiding commitment to justice — not just for themselves, but for democracy, the marginalized, and the truth itself. “Carry on. Keep going. Wait for another bonfire to be lit on high, another beam of light to guide the way back to the coast, to solid ground."

Charco Press - I'm Still Here

Ana Paula Maia’s Bury Your Dead, translated by Padma Viswanathan and published by Charco Press, is both terrific and terrifying, as it is as brutal as a high-speed crash and as dark as asphalt on a moonless night, and is sure to stick with readers long after they reach the end of the road that is perhaps the most messed-up, and yet oddly tender, Edgar Wilson narrative (in English) to date!

Despite Edgar Wilson having a new job in Bury Your Dead, he continues to be tasked with carrying out “the dirty work of others,” in this case, roadkill removal—“o trabalho sujo dos outros” serves as the title of one of the novels collected in Maia’s Saga of Brutes (Dalkey Archive Press, 2016), and is a recurring theme in her oeuvre.

The narrative of Bury Your Dead takes place in an unnamed region of Brazil, which Maia depicts as quasi-post-apocalyptic—the atmosphere is suffocating; the sky, lost in gray cloud cover that snuffs out the sun, is littered with the flying debris of incessant explosions from the nearby quarry. Accordingly, Maia represents this corner of Brazil (and by extension, the rest of the globe) as an unnatural environment; a world in disintegration as a result of humanity’s ecological impact on planet Earth; a society no longer able, or no longer willing, to sustain itself, and thus, on the brink of collapse.

In this Brazil, Edgar Wilson scrapes animal carcasses from the highways, hauls them back to headquarters, and then grinds and burns the remains for the purpose of creating industrial fertilizer. However, it doesn’t stop at animals, as eventually Edgar happens upon a human corpse or two that he simply cannot stand to see picked apart by vultures. Although Edgar tries his damnedest to do “the right thing” by getting these bodies to their proper final resting places, his efforts run into roadblock after roadblock due to the apathy of bureaucrats: police officers, ambulance drivers, morgue dieners, etc.

Ultimately, with her signature gritty anti-Anthropocentric literary aesthetic steeped in interspecies ethics, Maia’s ruthless social critique prompts readers to consider what truly separates man from beast, if anything at all!

“Being a Chilean poet is like being a Peruvian chef or a Brazilian soccer player or a Venezuelan model.”

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: If you’ve read Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives but haven’t yet made your way to Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet, then you really ought to change that ASAP, as there exists an intertextual relationship between the two novels that is sure to blow your mind, or at least it did mine!

I’ll be frank, before I cracked the spine of my copy, which was translated by one of the GOATs Megan McDowell, I didn’t think Chilean Poet was really going to be my cup of tea… but was I ever wrong! Instead, it ended up being one of my favorite Latin American novels of all time!

Perhaps I ended up enjoying Chilean Poet as much as I did due to having visited Santiago prior, as Zambra recreates the city with the skill of a flâneur, however, I don’t think you need to be all that familiar in order to truly appreciate his magnum opus to date!

With that being said, I’ve been back in Santiago for a handful of days now and have made it a point to visit some of the landmarks Zambra cites in Chilean Poet… swipe to see what I’m talking about!

Metales Pesados is a bookstore in the Bellas Artes neighborhood that shows up numerous times in the narrative; it’s owned and operated by Sergio Parra, who himself is a “Chilean poet” as well as a character in the novel.

Zambra also alludes to a famous sandwich from La Fuente Alemana in Providencia known as a “Lomito Italiano” (Anthony Bourdain ate here too, so you know it’s good!).

In Barrio Bellavista, Zambra mentions Bar Galindo as well, which is an iconic restaurant that has been a local fixture for Chilean culinary classics since first opening its doors in 1968 (I ordered the pastel de choclo!).

Beyond all this, Nicanor Parra—who Bolaño and Zambra both revere(d)—has an incredible cameo in the novel, so I’ve been bringing this collection (pictured) around with me while I engage in the art of flânerie…

Anyway, have you read Chilean Poet?!?!

My Documents by Alejandro Zambra (trans. Megan McDowell): This is Zambra’s first collection of short stories, and I really loved it. All of Zambra’s literary trademarks—the everyday, metafiction, and the nexus between the personal and the political—are repackaged for brief interconnected narratives that tackle topics like relationships, toxic masculinity, and of course, dictatorship.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández (trans. Natasha Wimmer): I read this 70-page novel a couple months ago, and it blew me away. It covers an infamous crime that was carried out during Pinochet’s regime known as “El Caso Degollados,” albeit entirely from the perspectives of children who grew up during the dictatorship. This is an incredibly lyrical and surreal little book full of big ideas!

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Chris Andrews): This is probably my favorite of Bolaño’s shorter novels (Amulet is a close second), as I feel like it really distills his overarching aesthetic concerns in The Savage Detectives and 2666 into a much shorter narrative that is still incredibly enthralling and also rewarding. When people ask me where to start with Bolaño, I usually point them towards Distant Star.

I only recently discovered Nona Fernández, however, she has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary Latin American writers! Although Fernandez’s voice is all her own, I’d recommend The Twilight Zone to fans of Bolaño and Alejandro Zambra, both of whom also hail(ed) from Chile.

The Twilight Zone seamlessly blurs the lines between history, (auto-)fiction, straight-up speculation, and collective and personal memory, and in doing so, seeks to remember—by way of representation in prose—what the hell happened in Chile from 1973 to 1990 under the reign of Augusto Pinochet.

The Twilight Zone centers on Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, or as the narrator calls him throughout the novel, “the man who tortured people,” after he has a crisis of conscience and decides to spill the beans to a reporter in 1984. Nevertheless, Fernández also focuses in on a number of other real-life figures who both carried out and resisted the dictatorship respectively. Moreover, Fernández weaves in myriad global events and pop cultural references, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the television show from which the novel takes it name, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and much more.

I’ve also read Fernández’s Space Invaders, which has considerable subject and thematic crossover with The Twilight Zone, but more so portrays the perspectives of children who grew up during the dictatorship, rather than those of their parents, with a heavy dose of lyrical surrealism that reminds me a lot of Bolaño’s Amulet in more ways than one. If you’re going to read The Twilight Zone, then I’d strongly advise reading Space Invaders too, as the two narratives no doubt serve as strong compliments to one another.

Anyway, have you read Fernández?

Believe it or not, I’ll be flying to Chile tomorrow and plan to get my hands on her latest novel, El Martiano (2025), which has not yet been translated to English, but let’s hope the GOAT Natasha Wimmer is already on the case!

Thanks for reading… Peace!

I recently came across a used copy of this critical edition of Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Men of Maize at one of my favorite local indie bookstores and just had to have it even though I’ve never read Asturias before…

I’ve definitely seen this classic of Latin American literature mentioned here in the sub previously and am also aware that a Penguin Classics paperback edition was released in 2024, but I’ll admit that I really don’t know much about Asturias nor his work.

Anyway, in case you were wondering, the University of Pittsburgh Press and Penguin Classics editions were both translated by Gerald Martin.

If you’ve read this Guatemalan novel, please tell me: What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Thanks in advance… Peace!

Is there any news related to Latin American literature that you wish to share with the community?

Are you aware of any new book releases in the field of Latin American literature?

Is there a literary event that you’d like to promote?

Do you have any other pertinent information worth sharing here?

Thanks in advance!

**********

There are a few "latamlit" releases on my radar for the month of September:

Asmodeus by Rita Indiana (República Dominicana) - 9/1/26

>Asmodeus, a millennia-old demon, has inhabited Rudy, a once-legendary Dominican rock star, for decades. But in 1992, the demon’s powers begin to fade. What follows is a desperate weeklong odyssey as Asmodeus ricochets through the bodies of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo’s underworld: from Guinea, a young metalhead plotting a warehouse heist, to Mireya, the daughter of a former torturer, to other souls caught in his chaotic orbit. Each possession reveals another layer of a city still reeling from the Balaguer dictatorship. And each new host engenders a surprising tenderness in the demon.

>From acclaimed musical artist and author Rita Indiana, Asmodeus is written in urgent prose punctuated by original décimas, ten-line rhyming poems drawing from Latin American musical and oral tradition. Indiana weaves together Dominican heavy metal, black magic, and political trauma. Asmodeus is a supernatural noir, riotous thriller, and searing portrait of a nation grappling with its complicated past. — Graywolf Press

Silencio by Clyo Mendoza (México) - 9/15/26

>Silencio tells the story of Águeda, a young woman mourning the death of her mother. When the townspeople deny her a grave in the local cemetery, the mother’s body vanishes. Águeda knows her father is hiding it, and when she confronts him, he punishes her defiance with confinement.

>Serving her sentence in a house, Águeda lives within those walls as if in a second maternal womb—one that will transform her. In chapters alternating between the real and the imaginary, she mourns the destroyed futures of those who were silenced as she listens to her neighbors’ stories of loss—a child worker; a boy from the Tacuate community; and Mexican refugees in Canada. Through the walls, she senses the world: birds in dialogue, the beauty of the arid landscape, experiences of love and devastation. She comes to realize that in this mountain region that resembles the author’s hometown of Oaxaca, where organized crime holds sway, many—like her—mourn their dead and search for the disappeared.

>In her second book to be translated into English, Clyo Mendoza transcends the limits of language and realism to represent with lyric brutality the unspeakable violence in towns where narcotrafficking rules. — Penguin/Random House

Ply by Hernán Díaz (US/Argentina) - 9/29/26

>Centuries from now, at the dawn of a historical epoch filled with both uncertainty and promise, an orphan is adrift in a city on the brink of a great transformation. The state has been dismantled, and humans are reinventing social bonds and learning new ways to coexist with nature. Following a childhood defined by loss, survival, and found family, the orphan grows up to become a “pincher,” someone who steals electricity from the grid to sell it on the black market. It’s a high-risk life, one that brings her into a rich art and music scene where she powers underground concerts. It also leads her to a colossal scientific invention that could change the very fabric of reality.

>After rewriting America’s past with his two previous novels, Hernan Diaz defies expectations with his third and gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the future. A major achievement from a major contemporary writer, Ply questions the place of technology in the American experiment with a plot that grabs both heart and mind. It is a novel of ideas built from a story of people. Combining Dickensian odyssey, family drama, and scientific thriller, Ply poignantly charts the tenuous boundaries of selfhood and the distance that inevitably stands between us and those we love. - Penguin/Random House

Asmodeus - Graywolf Press

Do you read poetry? I really enjoy it, as it tends to flex a different muscle in my brain than does prose. I particularly love short, surreal poetry. Some of my favorite LatAm poets are Nicanor Parra, César Vallejo, and the inimitable Alejandra Pizarnik.

In 2016, New Directions Publishing put out Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, which collects her middle/late body of work as well as some of her posthumously published verse. It’s an astounding collection from one of Latin America’s most revered poets that was skillfully translated by Yvette Siegert. (Swipe to photo 2 for a sample of Pizarnik’s poetry and to photo 3 for Siegert’s accompanying translation.)

I’ve been dabbling in this book of poems quite a bit recently, as although I had every intention of reading a number of LatAm novels for Women in Translation Month, I’m in the midst of a big move, and thus, haven’t been able to commit much time to narratives as of late (plus most of my books are currently stashed away in boxes). So, anyway, I’ve been reading a bunch of Pizarnik’s poetry and I think you should too! …Bolaño did!

“Viviría muy a gusto en la cocina de Silvina Ocampo, en la de Alejandra Pizarnik, en la de la novelista y poeta mexicana Carmen Boullosa, en la de Simone de Beauvoir. Entre otras razones, porque son cocinas que están más limpias.” — Roberto Bolaño, Revista Ñ, 2001

Have you read any Pizarnik?

This novel had been on my radar for a hot minute, and I finally just happened upon a copy out in the wild earlier today. You already know I couldn’t leave it sitting there on the shelves…

Has anyone here by chance read The Man Who Loved Dogs and/or any other books by Leonardo Padura?

This novel is quite a honker, so it will likely be some time before I get to it, but still I just had to tell somebody about my score!

Thanks for reading! Peace!

John K. King Used and Rare Books in Detroit, MI, has to be one of the coolest bookstores on the planet!

Whenever I pass through Detroit, I try to make a stop at this four-story bookstore, as their selection of more than one million books (no joke), is matchless to say the least! Also, their prices are very reasonable (Terra Nostra cost me the most at $9.50 USD).

If you ever end up visiting John K. King Bookstore, make sure to give yourself ample time to explore the stacks, as the place is a true labyrinth! Don’t worry though, the staff will of course hook you up with a map.

Anyway, due to the fact that I had limited space available in my suitcase, I made myself be rather selective with my choices, so I only walked away with five Latin American titles in total. Nevertheless, you can swipe to the end to see some of the other books I picked up as well (including three first-editions by Denis Johnson, all of which only cost me $9.50 USD each as well).

Believe it or not, it's mostly a coincidence that the five LatAm books I walked away with are all vintage editions from The Noonday Press, which is a now-defunct imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux… OK, enough rambling—here's what I picked up from Latin America:

Terra Nostra by Carlos Fuentes (México)

The Green House by Mario Vargas Llosa (Perú)

Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa (Perú)

The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (Perú)

Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba)

Although I am somewhat ashamed to admit it, I've actually never read a single book by Vargas Llosa nor Carpentier. Also, I DNF'd The Death of Artemio Cruz when I was in my early twenties, but after hearing a lot about Terra Nostra recently, my interest in Fuentes has no doubt been rekindled, so I may have to try out his stuff again sometime soon!

Have you read any of these books? If so, would you please be so kind as to tell me your thoughts in the comment section below? Thanks in advance!

By the way, I'm still celebrating WITMonth by trying to focus on primarily reading works written by Latin American women this August, but perhaps I'll dive into one of the LatAm classics pictured above in September... In that case, where should I begin?

PS — I'm super curious to know: Has anyone else here ever been to John K. King Bookstore? It's a gem for sure!

Have you read any of contemporary Colombian writer Evelio Rosero's work?

I just finished Way Far Away (2024; originally published in Spanish as En el lejero in 2003) the other day. This was my first-ever read from Rosero, and I am now quite keen to check out more of his stuff, as I enjoyed Way Far Away, even though I did find its message to be a bit murky in the end.

The title that I've heard mentioned most when Rosero's name comes up is The Armies (a.k.a. Los ejércitos), which was first brought to my attention several months back by u/ItsHeavyReality—shout-out! Also, kudos to u/abgreens for not letting me forget about Rosero by commenting about his work a couple times recently in our community's weekly threads.

I actually have The Armies here in my personal collection too, however, I opted to start with Way Far Away simply due to its brevity (the English translation is approximately 80 pages in total). To my knowledge, (most) all of Rosero's work that has been translated into English, is published by New Directions, which is one of my all-time favorite presses. For those curious, Way Far Away was translated by Anne McLean and Victor Meadowcroft and is marked NDP 1591, whereas The Armies was translated by McLean solo and is listed as NDP 1174.

So, to be clear, I'm going to keep my thoughts rather brief on Way Far Away, as I'm trying to work on being less verbose...

Way Far Away is an incredibly dark, heavy, and confounding novel(la) that had me absolutely entranced in its oppressive envisioning of Colombian society despite that the narrative ultimately left me scratching my head upon reading the final lines...

In any case, what I like best about this book is its surreal and somber imagery as well as Rosero's masterful employment of various menacing motifs, which in my view, impart the narrative with its uniquely mesmerizing quality.

To me, Way Far Away feels akin to a psychological horror film of sorts. The atmosphere that encapsulates the narrative—one chiefly comprised of omnipresent mist, a mountain abyss, millions of dead mice, creepy townsfolk, and overwhelming silence—is sure to delight fans of literary horror. Nonetheless, with that said, Way Far Away hit me quite different than did Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream or Selva Almada's Not a River for instance...

Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure that I can put into words what exactly makes Rosero's brand of surrealist horror in Way Far Away so distinct, but to me it certainly seems indescribably idiosyncratic. Perhaps that difference merely has to do with Way Far Away being set in Colombia—as opposed to in Argentina as is the case with the aforementioned novels of Schweblin and Almada, which lends Rosero an entirely different palette of imagery with which to paint his prose.

For instance, the image of the Condor (a national symbol of Colombia and the respective countries that make up the Andean region more broadly) looms large in Way Far Away. Nevertheless, I believe there also exists some other ineffable aspect to Rosero's writing that renders it one of a kind—maybe it's his sharp and unending focus on setting, as the small, isolated town up in the mountains in which the narrative takes place often feels deathly alive, personified by clandestine villainous actors.

With this in mind, I posit that Way Far Away is a social critique of sorts that takes the form of a surrealist horror novel(la). Straight up, I won't pretend for one second that I understand all of the intricacies and nuances of Colombian society, however, I believe that in Way Far Away, Rosero indicts the types of individual decisions and selfish behaviors that perpetuate injustice across modern-day Colombia, and especially the choice to remain silent—often out of one's own convenience—in the face of great atrocities… or, at least that’s my take!

Again, to be honest: Way Far Away isn't a difficult read in the sense that its style and form make it challenging, but rather, it's tough in the sense that Rosero does not provide readers with clear answers whatsoever (kind of like a David Lynch film), instead leaving them to interpret the narrative on their own accord.

At the end of the day, I would indeed recommend Way Far Away, but with the caveat that you go into it open-minded and ready for the uncanny, because it sure as hell gets awfully weird!

Anyway, have you read Way Far Away, The Armies, or any of Rosero's other books? If so, would you please be so kind as to drop your thoughts in the comment section below?

As always, thanks for reading... Peace!

(FYI: I'm currently reading The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández for WITMonth!)

Is there any news related to Latin American literature that you wish to share with the community?

Are you aware of any new book releases in the field of Latin American literature?

Is there a literary event that you’d like to promote?

Do you have any other pertinent information worth sharing here?

Thanks in advance!

**********

The main LatAmLit book release on my radar for the month of August once again comes from our friends at Charco Press: Bury Your Dead by Ana Paula Maia (translated by Padma Viswanathan).

Find Charco's description of the forthcoming Brazilian novel, which is scheduled to be released on August 25, below:

>"A roadkill crew in rural Brazil finds the wrong kind of body. Edgar Wilson has left behind his job as a stunner at the slaughterhouse. He now spends his days collecting the bodies of animals killed on the road, transporting them to a facility where they are ground down in a giant mill and turned into fertiliser. On an otherwise ordinary day, the insistent cries of vultures draw him deep into the brush, where he comes upon the body of a woman hanging from a tree, swaying gently in the stillness. He knows he is not meant to collect human remains – but nothing around him seems to fulfil the role it was meant to play. Neither the police nor the healthcare system has the tools to handle such a scene. With stark, economical prose, Ana Paula Maia constructs a world where the boundaries between animal and human, good and evil, shift and blur. Bury Your Dead confirms the fierce power of Maia’s literary vision, marking her out as one of the most original voices in contemporary Brazilian literature. As in Of Cattle and Men , where she crafted a luminous poetics through a slow, contemplative rhythm, and in On Earth As It Is Beneath , a dizzying thriller in which a prison director hunts down his own inmates, Maia once again sets out to recycle death in search of the sacred – even within the most putrefied remnants of human matter."

I have been highly anticipating the release of Bury Your Dead since it was first announced last summer (if memory serves) upon the publication of On Earth As It Is Beneath (also published by Charco and translated by Padma Viswanathan), as currently Maia is one of my absolute favorite writers!

If you have not read Maia's stuff before, I would strongly suggest starting with On Earth As It Is Beneath, which in my view reads like a historically accurate action flick in print!

If you enjoy On Earth As It Is Beneath, then you should check out Of Cattle and Men before Bury Your Dead is released at the end of this month, as both novels center on the primary recurring protagonist of Maia's fictional universe, Edgar Wilson.

Finally, if you feel like you need a little more Edgar Wilson in your life, or you find yourself curious to learn more about his backstory, then you also really ought to get your hands on a copy of Maia's Saga of Brutes, which is published by Dalkey Archive Press.

(FYI: On Earth As It Is Beneath, Of Cattle and Men, and Bury Your Dead are roughly 100 pages a piece, while Saga of Brutes is comprised of three short novellas, each of which is less than 100 pages respectively.)

Bury Your Dead — Charco Press

Anthony Jeselnik continues to impress with his literary tastes regardless of what one makes of his comedy!

Have you read Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin?

What are you reading for Women in Translation Month?

“This month Jeselnik Book Club is reading Samantha Schewblin's [sic] Little Eyes, translated by Megan McDowell. I don't want to give anything away. This book is crazy unsettling and all over the place. It is 241 pages and was longlisted for The Booker Prize in 2020. It's great. I love it. You WILL HAVE QUESTIONS and I'll do my best to guess at the answers. Email JeselnikBookClub@gmail.com by August 22nd and I'll answer them at the end of the month. Enjoy your reading.” — anthonyjeselnik.com

It's already August again, and you know what that means... it's Women in Translation Month!

So in order to celebrate WITMonth, here's a dozen books from my personal collection that I've been dancing around reading for a while now…

The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández (Chile)

A Little Luck by Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina)

Cathedrals by Claudia Piñeiro (Argentina)

Restoration by Ave Barrera (México)

Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza (México)

Água Viva by Clarice Lispector (Brasil)

The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector (Brasil)

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (Brasil)

We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Argentina)

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán (Chile)

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (México)

Letters from a Seducer by Hilda Hilst (Brasil)

If I'm being realistic, knowing what lies ahead for me at the end of this month (a big move and whatnot!), I'll likely only get a chance to read about three or four of the books pictured, but I guess we shall see...

Although all the books pictured are ones that I have been interested in for a minute now, I certainly wouldn't mind a little assistance deliberating, as I can be a rather indecisive fellow from time to time. In other words, help me make my final selections please!

Generally, I select which books I read based on my mood at the moment of needing to begin a new work, so my process is largely whim-based.

Lately, I have no doubt been opting for shorter reads as I've had a surprisingly busy summer, and therefore, have been doing a lot of my reading in chunks spread out across days and weeks.

Whenever I take on longer works (300-plus pages or so), it's important for me to have a good block of time reserved ahead dedicated primarily to reading, as it tends to really irk me when life forces me to put a book down for several days—or even worse, a week or more—when I'm in the middle of a gripping narrative, but finding said time is always easier said than done.

Anyway, if all goes to plan, I'm thinking I'll read Nona Fernández's The Twilight Zone first because it ought to pair well with all of the Alejandro Zambra I've read recently.

Although this book is not pictured, I've been putting in some work towards trying to get my hands on an advanced copy of Ana Paula Maia's forthcoming novel in English (due out from Charco Press on August 11), Bury Your Dead... fingers crossed! I will for real drop everything I have going on at any given moment to knock out Bury Your Dead in a single sitting, as I've been highly anticipating its publication for quite some time!

I've also heard a lot of positive reviews about Claudia Piñeiro's new English-language novel, Cathedrals, which is published by Charco as well. So, perhaps I'll commit to reading that one too, if not A Little Luck instead. In any case, I really ought to read an Argentinian work, as I have some upcoming travel planned there for the fall.

Aside from the books specifically mentioned above, I'm open-minded about reading any of the others pictured. Frankly, I feel like I have too many novels by Clarice Lispector sitting on my TBR list, so perhaps I should give her the time of day this August. Still, I've also been keen to read Liliana's Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza for a while now too, so it's honestly a tough call...

Has anyone here read any of these books? If so, would you please be so kind as to give me your honest thoughts? Thank you in advance...

Also, I believe I speak for everyone when I say, we're all curious to know: What works of "latamlit" are you reading for Women in Translation Month?

Peace!

Have you read Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos?

This was my first read from Villalobos and I genuinely enjoyed it overall. At the end of the day, I found Down the Rabbit Hole to be an impressive, if not brief (70 pages in total), debut novel, and it has left me rather curious about what more Villalobos can do with the printed page.

I also have Villalobos' I'll Sell You a Dog here in my personal collection, though I haven't yet given it a go—have you?

The other Villalobos title that I'm especially interested in is The Past Pursues Us Like Detectives, Debt Collectors, Thieves, in large part, simply due to its incredibly awesome title, which almost feels like it was pulled from the tracklist of a Midwest-Emo album (that's a compliment!).

Down the Rabbit Hole is a heavily satirical novel that, via its short but sharp-witted, laugh-out-loud-funny narrative, disembowels the machismo at the crux of narcoculture in Mexico. Furthermore, Villalobos' satire offers a strong critique of the global capitalist society (i.e. our very own) which ultimately creates the type of economic demand necessitating the very existence of narcos and their culture of greed, violence, and machismo in the first place.

My favorite thing about Down the Rabbit Hole is the narrative voice, which Villalobos absolutely slays! The story is narrated from the perspective of a young boy who is surrounded by the extravagance and perils of narcoculture, ultimately imparting the novel with an overarching tone that achieves a singularly uncanny mix of childlike innocence and depravity.

For those interested, below is the synopsis found on the back cover of the Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition of Down the Rabbit Hole:

>"Tochtli lives in a palace. He loves hats, samurai, guillotines, and dictionaries, and what he wants more than anything right now is a new pet for his private zoo: a pygmy hippopotamus from Liberia. But Tochtli is a child whose father is a drug baron on the verge of taking over a powerful cartel, and Tochtli is growing up in a luxury hideout that he shares with hit men, prostitutes, dealers, servants, and the odd corrupt politician or two. Long-listed for The Guardian First Book Award, Down the Rabbit Hole, a masterful and darkly comic first novel, is the chronicle of a delirious journey to grant a child's wish."

If you end up reading this novel, it will likely serve you well to make use of the "Glossary" included in the book's back matter. Personally, I didn't find all of the entries to be entirely helpful (frankly, a few inclusions seemed rather obvious to me), but the first note included therein no doubt provides illuminating translations of the all the primary characters' Nahuatl-rooted names. For instance, by way of the glossary, I learned that the protagonist's name, Tochtli, means "rabbit," which thereby shines additional light on the novel's title.

Anyway, if you've read Down the Rabbit Hole or any of Villalobos' other works, would you care to share your thoughts in the comments?

In any case, peace!

PS — I've had this bookmark lying around at home for quite some time... Thematically, it seemed to me to be the best, and most serendipitous, option among many for keeping track of my place in the text of Down the Rabbit Hole... Using this bookmark also almost felt like a sick inside joke between Villalobos and I, one which I'd like to think he'd appreciate considering that his sense of humor might be even more twisted than mine!

Have you ever read Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra? At the very least, perhaps you’ve heard of his magnum opus Chilean Poet, no? If not, let me put Zambra on your radar.

Zambra often draws comparisons to his fellow countryman and literary predecessor, Roberto Bolaño (here's a paywall-free link to a 2022 article on Zambra from the LA Times that heavily references Bolaño), and while there are similarities in their aesthetics, in my opinion, overall their bodies of work are quite distinct from one another.

On the whole, I feel that Bolaño’s tone is much darker and more surreal, whereas Zambra’s prose has a real everyday levity to it and the concept of metafiction indisputably sits at its core. Nevertheless, Bolaño and Zambra alike are poets who ended up being fiction writers regardless of their original intentions. Accordingly, I do believe that something resembling that ineffable strain of surrealist poetics coursing throughout Bolaño’s oeuvre also rears its head, albeit with a different face, in Zambra’s fictional universe.

With all the above being said, however, I do want to stress that I think Zambra has really set himself apart from Bolaño with the development of his singular quotidian, metafictional style. Zambra’s unique brand of literature is no doubt most apparent in Chilean Poet; nonetheless, reading his three earlier novels—Bonsai, The Privates Lives of Trees, and Ways of Going Home—as well as My Documents provides a mesmerizing look into the evolution of Zambra’s literary aesthetic and its culmination in Chilean Poet.

My first experience with Zambra was back in 2018 or so when I read Mis documentos (in Spanish) after a friend of mine from grad school recommended it to me as a fan of Bolaño. I remember genuinely enjoying the collection, but because I was reading so many other books during those days due to the demands of my comp lit program, I sort of forgot about it…

Then, on something of a whim, I read the English-language version of My Documents—in part because it included additional stories not in the original Spanish version—during Spring Break 2024 on a beach in Mexico (I was working as a teacher at the time), and for whatever reason, it was exactly the book I needed in that moment, as it really moved me and inspired me to start reading for fun again (after completing my PhD in 2022, I took an unintended hiatus of sorts from reading with regularity).

Although I really liked My Documents on both occasions that I read it, I didn't feel much hurry to read anything else from Zambra… Candidly, something about Penguin Books' presentation of Zambra’s work kept turning me off—I still can’t decide if I like the whitish cover designs of his English-language paperbacks, but I can say for sure that Penguin's synopses do not even come close in the slightest to being able to capture the everyday magic found in Zambra’s poetic, emotional (meta)fiction. This is to say, the first time I read the book description of Chilean Poet, I kind of shrugged in disinterest and moved on...

In any case, I must have had some cash burning a hole in my pocket last July (2025) because I went out and impulse-bought Chilean Poet and decided to give it a whirl. Ultimately, I was pleasantly surprised in countless ways—maybe also a bit miffed at myself for ever having doubted Zambra’s craft in the first place, and Chilean Poet ended up becoming one of my favorite reads over the last couple of years (some of that definitely has to do with its extended intertextual conversation with Bolaño's The Savage Detectives)!

Anyway, this summer I’ve been feeling like I need more Zambra in my life, so I decided to check out his earlier novels (which in my mind, form a trilogy or triptych of sorts, albeit loosely and very unofficially, as this is just my hot take). I’ll tell you all here and now, I greatly enjoyed all three, perhaps Ways of Going Home especially so, but Bonsai and The Private Lives of Trees are both excellent in their own right too. Stick with me and below I’ll dive into each of these three a bit more…

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Bonsai —This is Zambra’s first “novel,” which in English sits just shy of 80 pages. Bonsai was originally published in Spanish in 2006, first translated into English by Carolina de Robertis in 2008, and then re-translated for publication with Penguin Books by Megan McDowell in 2022. In 2011, Netflix released a film adaptation, also titled Bonsai, which I have not yet seen (have you?).

In my view, Bonsai serves an early glimpse of the idiosyncratic literary aesthetic for which readers have come to recognize Zambra. It is a heavily fragmented, short novel broken into five parts that vary in length and form to a certain degree, though some symmetry is evident across the different parts that comprise the work. Within each part, Zambra fragments the narrative into myriad snippets that rarely last more than a page or two (an element of his fiction that, for me, is one of its defining features).

The protagonist at the center of Bonsai is Julio, however, I read Julio as a sort of fictional representation of Zambra himself, or at least, a fictional representation of certain aspects of Zambra himself, as in the narrative, Julio is a writer who ends up (tran)scribing a novel called "Bonsai"… Honestly, it’s kind of hard to put into my own words what Zambra actually achieves in Bonsai, so you’re just going to have to read it for yourself, but in any case, let’s just say it get’s meta AF! Still, I guess I will say that Bonsai is a love story of sorts, but certainly not a typical one, and I think the ending will surprise and devastate most at the same time.

The Privates Lives of Trees — This is Zambra’s second novel, though it is very much linked to his first. The Private Lives of Trees was initially published in Spanish in 2007, translated to English by Megan McDowell and released by Open Letter Books in 2010, before being rereleased in English by Penguin Books in 2023 (the Penguin edition nearly reaches 100 pages in total).

The Private Lives of Trees shares much in common with Bonsai, while also being completely distinct at the same time. There is an intertextual relationship between Zambra’s first two novels, yet they also stand entirely on their own. Still, in The Private Lives of Trees a book about a guy growing a bonsai also factors into the narrative. Unlike Bonsai, however, TPLOT is separated into only two parts, the second of which is less than ten pages and seemingly wraps up in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless, analogous to Bonsai, TPLOT makes use of the same type of narrative fragmentation, meaning that it gets chopped into pieces every (other) page or so.

Whereas the narrative of Bonsai is more focused on romantic relationships, TPLOT shifts its focus to instead deal with relationships between step-parents and step-children, a major theme to which Zambra returns in Chilean Poet (note: you don’t have to have a kid to dig Zambra; I don’t even have a houseplant and I still find his work extremely relatable). The protagonist of TPLOT is named Julián, however, readers learn that his name was supposed to be Julio before a clerical error of sorts occurred at the hospital the day he was born. In my opinion, this is Zambra not so slyly alluding to the fact that Julio (from Bonsai) and Julián (from TPLOT) are simply personifications of (parts of) himself. TPLOT is also very invested in metafiction, as at its crux, it is a story about telling a bedtime story. I will warn you that this novel ends without a clear resolution, but that’s kind of Zambra’s point, which he emphasizes through a continuous, ludic metafictional toying with readers: life rarely offers endings wrapped up with a nice, little bow!

Ways of Going Home —This is Zambra’s third novel, which was first published in Spanish in 2011, translated to English again by McDowell, and released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US—and by Granta in the UK—in 2013. The used hardback edition I purchased rests at 139 pages in total, however, the line spacing and fragmentation also make it a rather quick read, albeit slightly longer than its predecessors. Ways of Going Home is divided into four parts that alternate back and forth between two differing levels of metafiction (confusing, I know, but beautifully so, just trust me).

To my mind, there is no doubt that Ways of Going Home is the most mature (but perhaps that was already obvious) and fully realized work of Zambra’s unofficial early trilogy. The way I see it, structurally Ways of Going Home is the culmination of Zambra’s experimentation with style and form in Bonsai and The Private Lives of Trees, as in WOGH readers observe the results of Zambra’s fine-tuning of his one-of-a-kind metafictional literary aesthetic.

For what it’s worth, I think Farrar, Straus and Giroux does a much better job of summarizing Zambra’s work in WOGH than does Penguin Books with any of their titles from Zambra; that is to say, I’d encourage you to read this particular book description in order to get a more concrete idea of what it’s truly like to read a Zambra novel. In this one, the unnamed protagonist (another stand-in, much like Arturo Belano in the case of Bolaño, for Zambra the real-life author) is a writer crafting a novel, however, the respective lives of the protagonist and the characters he creates begin to blur together before the reader’s eyes to marvelous ends. Again, it isn’t easy stating in words exactly what Zambra accomplishes, so I’d really just suggest finding out for yourself. Nonetheless, out of the trilogy, WOGH is undoubtedly the most political novel; in fact, politics and recent Chilean history barely come up in Bonsai and TPLOT, however, the specter of Pinochet looms large in Ways of Going Home, as it does, and to further extent, in My Documents and Chilean Poet respectively.

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If you were only going to read one of Zambra’s three early novels, I would recommend Ways of Going Home for sure, but that isn’t to say that Bonsai and The Private Lives of Trees aren’t great too. I do not believe one needs to read any of these three novels before taking on Chilean Poet, but I might recommend it if only to watch Zambra get better and better at his craft as he goes (you could also do this retroactively as I did). One also does not need to read My Documents before taking on Zambra’s magnum opus, though some interesting crossover does indeed exist between those two latter works. At the end of the day, I personally feel that Zambra is a poet’s fiction writer—or a writer’s writer more generally—so if you fancy yourself a writer in any way whatsoever, I would say: read them all!

By the way, all the most recent English editions of Zambra’s fiction are translated by Megan McDowell, who is one of the foremost translators working in the field of Latin American literature today (perhaps only second in notoriety to Natasha Wimmer, the translator of 2666, etc.). While I have only read one of Zambra’s books in both English and Spanish, I do believe that McDowell astutely and delightfully recreates the idiosyncrasies of Zambra’s brand of quotidian, metafictional literature—this is most definitely the case with Mis documentos/My Documents, and I presume McDowell’s fidelity and lucidity extend across her body of translation work with Zambra.

Anyway, has anyone here read Bonsai, The Privates Lives of Trees, and/or Ways of Going Home? What about My Documents and/or Chilean Poet?

Also, has anyone here read (either of) the two English-language Zambra titles that I have yet to read: Multiple Choice and Childish Literature?

Basically, what I’m asking is: If you’ve read some Zambra, would you please be so kind as to give us your thoughts? Thanks in advance...

If on the other hand, you’ve never read Zambra before, check out his most famous short story (collected in My Documents) for free here: "Thank You" - The Short Story Project.

Finally, here’s a link to my mini write-up on Chilean Poet from last summer in case you’re interested: Chilean Poet ...and also an even more miniature write-up on My Documents, which was one of my very first posts here in r/latamlit: My Documents.

As always, thanks for reading… Peace!

PS — For those of you who have read Nona Fernández: Space Invaders and Ways of Going Home (not to mention My Documents and Chilean Poet) dovetail nicely with one another, and I imagine the same can be said for The Twilight Zone, which I intend to finally read sometime this August for Women in Translation Month!

Do you like reading (anti-)Westerns? For instance, have you read Álvaro Enrigue's most recent publication in English, Now I Surrender? If not, I'd highly recommend it! (See my review here if interested.)

Outside of Latin American literature, have you read any renowned (anti-)Westerns like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Oakley Hall's Warlock, and/or John Williams' Butcher's Crossing?

Beyond these modern classics, have you ready any more contemporary (anti-)Westerns, such as Percival Everett's God's Country? (If you're in need of laugh, this short novel is absolutely hilarious in my opinion, but also an astute satire of racism in the United States; think Blazing Saddles on the printed page.)

Regardless, if you're looking to read some (anti-)Westerns that offer perspectives which are decidedly not US-centric, here are three novels from the Hispanophone world worth checking out (full disclosure: to date, I've only read two of the three novels pictured).

Texas: The Great Theft by Carmen Boullosa (México) — Deep Vellum

• This novel (originally published in Spanish in 2013, and translated into English by Samantha Schnee in 2014) revolves around the history of a conflict known as "The Cortina Troubles," which often flies under the radar here in the United States. In Texas, Boullosa represents the truly multicultural nature of nineteenth-century borderland society in and around Texas, as there is a vast array of characters from all walks of life—fugitive slaves, Comanches, cowboys, ranchers, Texas Rangers, Southern debutantes, European immigrants, and more. Within this sociocultural milieu, Boullosa's narrative demonstrates how one act of racial injustice (a mere verbal insult) can spark a firestorm that leads to complete and utter civil unrest. Boullosa's writing in Texas: The Great Theft is especially impressive due to her formal abilities of weaving together myriad different narrative fragments that are attached, respectively, to a multitude of diverse characters.

In the Distance by Hernán Díaz (Argentina) — Coffee House Press

• This novel was originally published in English in 2017. Although Díaz is Argentinian by birth, he now resides in the United States and writes primarily for an Anglophone audience (Díaz's subsequent novel, Trust, was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; also, Díaz is a top-tier Borges scholar). In the Distance is unlike any other (anti-)Western that I've read, as it depicts a Swedish immigrant (a literal giant of a man) who gets on the wrong boat in New York City, is separated from his beloved brother, and ends up alone in California. Accordingly, the narrative follows the protagonist as he attempts to head, from the West, back east against the current in search of his brother, and along the way, experiences one adventure after another. The novel deals with violence in a really unique and interesting way which never seeks to glorify the act. Ultimately, In the Distance is a (anti-)Western about radical foreignness and the immigrant experience in the United States.

Christ versus Arizona by Camilo José Cela (España) — Dalkey Archive Press

• (I have NOT read this novel!) Firstly, let's get this out of the way: Cela is a polemical figure due to the fact that he served as a censor and informant for the Franco regime during Spain's dictatorship (1939-1975). In any case, his most famous works, The Family of Pascual Duarte (Dalkey) and The Hive (nyrb), are both classic "novelas de la posguerra española" and paradigmatic examples of the literary aesthetic of "el tremendismo" (Pascual Duarte in particular is one of my all-time favorites; it's styled as a found manuscript, so it really harkens back to a longstanding tradition in Spanish letters). Christ versus Arizona was originally published in Spanish in 1988 (the year before Cela won the Nobel Prize in Literature) and translated into English in 2007 (by Martin Sokolinsky). The novel is set in Arizona in 1881, centers on Wyatt Earp and the O.K. Corral, and takes the form of a 250-page single-sentence monologue delivered by the unreliable and grotesquely dim narrator, Wendell L. Espana. Honestly, I was really into Cela for a hot minute circa 2014-2015 (it's a long story that has to do with my study-abroad experience), but I've put off reading this one simply due to the fact that it seems like quite a challenge to say the least. Nevertheless, I'm definitely going to make it happen one of these days... sooner or later...

Anyway, has anyone here read any of these anti-Western novels?

Also, can anyone here think of other works of "latamlit" that could be classified as (anti-)Westerns? Thanks in advance...

Peace!

Have you read You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue?

This was my second read from Enrigue, as I read his most recent English-language publication, Now I Surrender (2026), back in April, but I am no doubt greatly interested in reading more from Álvaro, considering I believe him to be one of the most important writers working in Spanish today.

Curiously, for some reason unbeknownst to me, although You Dreamed of Empires (Tu sueño imperios han sido) was written after Now I Surrender (Ahora me rindo y eso es todo)—as Enrigue himself puts it in his Acknowledgements, “in the plague years of 2020-2022”—it was released in English (2024) before Now I Surrender, which was originally published in Spanish in 2018.

Personally, I feel that You Dreamed of Empires and Now I Surrender are very much in conversation with one another, as both works are invested in exploring the history of conflict between Europeans (and/or Euro-descendants) and indigenous peoples in the Americas as well as the specter of colonialism that continues to haunt the present across the Western Hemisphere, not to mention the globe. Similarly, much of the experimentation with style and form that I encountered in Now I Surrender also makes an appearance—perhaps even more notably—in You Dreamed of Empires.

Right up front, please know that for those of you who happen to take on this novel, I would strongly encourage you to first read the “Note to English-Language Readers” included in the book’s front matter, as the information included therein will certainly aid you in navigating the text and its challenging vocabulary. Enrigue also includes a list of characters for readers to refer back to, as there is quite a cast in You Dreamed of Empires, and all the unique names can be rather hard to keep track of initially, at least until one gets into the groove of the novel.

You Dreamed of Empires is broken up into four parts and the narrative revolves around a nap taken by Moctezuma. While the narrative does make leaps through time on a number of occasions, most of it takes place over the course of a single day: the day Hernán Cortés and his band of conquistadors arrived in Tenochtitlán on November 8, 1519. Find an excerpt below for a little taste of the novel:

>“The afternoon of November 8, 1519, Moctezuma did exactly what he always did after eating, even if the whole world might change forever from the moment he woke up. He lapped the paste of magic mushrooms and honey from the Oaxacan black-clay spoon handed to him by the serving girl, and sat in the sun until he felt his eyes closing. Amid a now absolute silence he walked to his room and his bed. He took off his cape, his mantle, and his breechcloth, and got under the goose-feather coverlet. He pulled it up to his eyebrows and fell asleep.” (75).

The narrator of You Dreamed of Empires is omniscient yet also self-referential (Enrigue basically pulls a Cervantes and shows up in his own novel at one point; see Part II of Don Quixote, 1615), as there exist some striking, if not brief, moments of metafiction that flash like lightning before the reader's eyes. One of my favorite parts about this novel is the narrative voice (i.e. Enrigue’s voice), which shines throughout, as it achieves a matchless balance of historicity and contemporaneity. Stated more plainly: Enrigue does this thing where he writes about history using today's diction, often employing riveting anachronisms—anachronisms that reminded me a lot of reading César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter.

In this vein, I find that Enrigue has an unrivaled ability to represent historical figures in fiction; in my view, he brings Moctezuma, Cortés, etc. to life on the printed page in a way that simply no other writer working today could. Furthermore, Enrigue’s representation of Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco in 1519 is electric, as at no point in the text did I ever have a tough time imagining the scene (frankly, Enrigue's capacity for representing with real specificity the architecture of Tenochtitlán is beyond impressive). As I see it, Enrigue paints pictures in the medium of language with a level of detail that is exhaustive but never exhausting and that practically transports his readers through space and time.

One of my favorite chapters is the very first, as I could smell and taste the words coming off the page, and the imagery was giving me visuals that nearly felt psilocybin-induced. Accordingly, from my POV, the effect Enrigue achieves is to demonstrate the surreality of history, and in particular, how utterly surreal it truly must have been for the conquistadors and the “Aztecs” (see the “Note to English-Language Readers" for an explanation of why this signifier is polemical) to come face to face with one another. With that in mind, if you like surrealist novels and have any interest in psychedelics whatsoever, you should probably read You Dreamed of Empires straight away! I'm quite sure you’ll enjoy the trip!

Nevertheless, while I do believe You Dreamed of Empires to be an incredibly enjoyable read, I will admit that it can be rather challenging as well; however, I find that quality makes the novel, in turn, all the more rewarding in the end (I had to put forth a bit more effort than usual, but a large part of that has to do with poor timing, as I elected to start this novel at an inopportune moment). For instance, at times, I struggled to keep track of some of the characters and had to go back to the front-matter lists to clear up my confusion; I also had to look up some of the Nahuatl-rooted words on occasion, though as the narrative went on, I definitely got more comfortable in this respect, as Enrigue tends to teach his readers as he narrates. Moreover, I found it somewhat demanding to stay on top of all the politics at play in the Aztec Empire, though the intricacies of Tenochtitlán society are represented with such nuance and care that it’s almost impossible not to find all the political subterfuge absolutely captivating.

Ultimately, with You Dreamed of Empires, Enrigue prods his readers into seeing the history of the conquest and colonization of the Americas in a new light, one which is not dominated by the false illuminations—the illusions and delusions—of Eurocentrism. Nonetheless, at the same time, Enrigue does not glorify Moctezuma and his empire, nor fall into the trap of primitivism; instead, he represents the Aztecs in all their humanity, and to entirely fascinating ends to boot!

Have you read any of Enrigue's books? If so, please drop your thoughts in the comments!

For those of you who have read Sudden Death and/or Hypothermia, what did you think?

If anyone here has read any of Enrigue's works that have yet to be translated into English, what do you make of his earlier output?

As always, thanks for reading... Peace!