Mallarmé as Jesus
Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
More on Bolano’s Journalist
Alejandro Zambra, well-known to many as the author of Bonsai (see The Quarterly Conversation’s review here), has just published a new novel (his third) in Spanish: Formas de volver a casa (“Ways of Returning Home”).
No word yet on an English translation date for that book, but The Millions does have an interview with Zambra.
TM: Tell us a little about Formas de volver a casa—is it much of a departure from your first two books?
AZ: It’s a book about memory, about parents, about Chile. It’s about the 80s, about the years when we children were secondary characters in the literature of our parents. It’s about the dictatorship, as well, I guess. And about literature, intimacy, the construction of intimacy. I don’t know if it’s very different from my previous books; the truth is I feel like it’s close to The Private Lives of Trees. In fact it starts from there, from some of the intuitions or images of the past that were in that book. Maybe the main difference is that it’s in large part narrated in the first person. It also includes a writer’s diary, a kind of center or heart in which the fiction breaks, and the only thing left is the writer’s voice searching for its origins. It’s my most personal book, without a doubt, although the others were that as well.
You Might Also Like:
More from Conversational Reading:
- New Book: The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra This is a note to let everyone know that Open Letter has just published The Private Lives of Trees by Bonsai-author Alejandro Zambra. (Amazon lists...
- Alejandro Zambra Story For the Alejandro Zambra fans out there, he has a new short story in the Spanish-language publication Letras y Libres. For those wondering who Zambra...
- Best Translated Book Shortlist Party If you’re in NYC tonight, drop by for the announcement of the 10-title Best Translated Book shortlists, both for fiction and poetry. As Chad says:...
- Bonsai in The Nation The Nation has had some excellent Latin American fiction coverage of late. Now there's a piece on Bonsai, the novella from Chileno Alejandro Zambra. This...
- National Book Critics Circle Awards Here are your winners. Fiction: The March by E.L. Doctorow Memoir: Them: A Memoir of Parents by Francine du Plessix Gray Nonfiction: Voices from Chernobyl...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
You Say