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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" (The New Yorker) book
about the stories we spin for ourselves and our loved ones-now
reissued by Penguin Veronica is late, and Julian 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. He
has made a life as a literature professor, developing a novel about
a man tending to a bonsai tree on the weekends. He is a narrator,
an architect, a chronicler of other people's stories. But as the
night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of
Veronica, Julian finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the
story of his life-of their lives together. What combination of
desire and coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will
the future-and possibly motherless-Daniela think of him and his
stories? Why tell stories at all? The second novel by acclaimed
Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, The Private Lives of Trees
overflows with his signature wit and his gift for crafting short
novels that manage to contain whole worlds.
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Multiple Choice (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R280
R248
Discovery Miles 2 480
Save R32 (11%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Reader, your life is full of choices. Some will bring you joy and
others will bring you heartache. Will you choose to cheat (in life,
the examination that follows) or will you choose to copy? Will you
fall in love? If so, will you remember her name and the number of
freckles on her back? Will you marry, divorce, annul? Will you
leave your run-down neighbourhood, your long-suffering country and
your family? Will you honour your dead, those you loved and those
you didn't? Will you have a child, will you regret it? Will you
tell them you regret it? Will you, when all's said and done,
deserve a kick in the balls? Will you find, here, in this slender
book, fictions that entertain and puzzle you? Fictions that reflect
yourself back to you? Will you find yourself? Relax, concentrate,
dispel any anxious thoughts. Let the world around you settle and
fade. Are you ready? Now turn over your papers, and begin.
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Not to Read (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R411
R338
Discovery Miles 3 380
Save R73 (18%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In Not to Read, Alejandro Zambra outlines his own particular theory
of reading that also offers a kind of blurry self-portrait, or
literary autobiography. Whether writing about Natalia Ginzburg,
typewriters and computers, Paul Leautaud, or how to be silent in
German, his essays function as a laboratory for his novels, a
testing ground for ideas, readings and style. Not to Read also
presents an alternative pantheon of Latin American literature -
Zambra would rather talk about Nicanor Parra than Pablo Neruda,
Mario Levrero than Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His voice is that of a
trusted friend telling you about a book or an author he's excited
about, how he reads, and why he writes. A standard-bearer of his
generation in Chile, with Not to Read Alejandro Zambra confirms he
is one of the most engaging writers of our time.
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My Documents (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R405
R332
Discovery Miles 3 320
Save R73 (18%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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. 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 collection of
stories 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.
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Chilean Poet (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R255
Discovery Miles 2 550
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Gonzalo is a frustrated would-be poet in a city full of poets;
poets lurk in every bookshop, prop up every bar, ready to debate
the merits of Teillier and Millan (but never Neruda - beyond the
pale). Then, nine years after their bewildering breakup, Gonzalo
reunites with his teen sweetheart, Carla, who is now, to his
surprise, the mother of a young son, Vicente. Soon they form a
happy sort-of family - a stepfamily, though no such word exists in
their language. In time, fate and ambition pull the lovers apart,
but when it comes to love and poetry, what will be Gonzalo's legacy
to his not-quite-stepson Vicente? Zambra chronicles with tenderness
and insight the everyday moments - absurd, painful, sexy, sweet,
profound - that constitute family life in this bold and brilliant
new novel.
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Ways of Going Home (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R303
R241
Discovery Miles 2 410
Save R62 (20%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A young boy plays hide and seek in the suburbs of Santiago, unaware
that his neighbours are becoming entangled in the brutality of
Pinochet's regime. Then one night a mysterious girl appears in his
neighbourhood and makes a life-changing request.
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'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
family After 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 Bolanos, 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.
One of Cuba’s—and Latin America’s—greatest historical
novels, about imperial conquest carried out under the guise of
liberation, in its first new English translation in sixty years and
featuring a new foreword by Alejandro Zambra A Penguin Classic When
he arrives in Cuba at the close of the eighteenth century, Victor
Hugues, a merchant sailor from Marseille, brings with him not
only the idealism of the French Revolution but also its ambition
and bloodlust. Landing at the Havana doorstep of a trio of wealthy,
eccentric Creole orphans, he sweeps them across the Caribbean Sea
to Guadeloupe, whose enslaved Africans he frees only then to
exploit them in his fight against the British for colonial
sovereignty. What ensues in Alejo Carpentier’s swashbuckling,
magical realist masterpiece is an explosive clash between the New
World and the Old World, and between revolutionary ideals and the
corrupting allure of power.
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Bonsai (Paperback)
Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell
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R236
Discovery Miles 2 360
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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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 "brilliant, innovative, beautiful" (The Guardian) book from the
acclaimed author of Chilean Poet "Dazzling . . . a work of parody,
but also of poetry." -The New York Times Book Review NAMED 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. NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE
SUMMER BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE
MILLIONS, VOX, LIT HUB, THE BBC, THE GUARDIAN AND PUREWOW
Verónica is late, and Julián 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. He has made a life as
a literature professor, developing a novel about a man tending to a
bonsai tree on the weekends. He is a narrator, an architect, a
chronicler of other people's stories. But as the night stretches on
before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Verónica, Julián
finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life
– of their lives together. What combination of desire and
coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will the future
– and possibly motherless – Daniela think of him and his
stories? Why tell stories at all? Â Â Â The Private
Lives of Trees, Alejandro Zambra’s second novel, now published in
the UK for the first time in a revised translation by Megan
McDowell, overflows with his signature wit and his gift for
crafting short novels that manage to contain whole worlds.
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Yesterday (Paperback)
Juan Emar; Translated by Megan McDowell; Introduction by Alejandro Zambra
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R382
R307
Discovery Miles 3 070
Save R75 (20%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In the city of San Agustin de Tango, the banal is hard to tell from
the bizarre. In a single day, a man is guillotined for preaching
the intellectual pleasures of sex; an ostrich in a zoo, reversing
roles, devours a lion; and a man, while urinating, goes bungee
jumping through time itself-and manages to escape. Or does he?
Witness the weird machinery of Yesterday, where the Chilean master
Juan Emar deploys irony, digression, and giddy repetitions to
ratchet up narrative tension again and again and again, in this
thrilling whirlwind of the ecstatically unexpected-all wed to the
happiest marriage of any novel, ever. Born in Chile at the tail end
of the nineteenth century, Juan Emar was largely overlooked during
his lifetime, and lived in self-imposed exile from the literary
circles of his day. A cult of Emarians, however, always persisted,
and after several rediscoveries in the Spanish-speaking world, he
is finally getting his international due with the English-language
debut of Yesterday, deftly translated by Megan McDowell. Emar's
work offers unique and delirious pleasures, and will be an epiphany
to anglophone readers.
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