Chilean Poet: A Novel

ISBN: 0143109200

Author: Zambra, Alejandro

Condition: New

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEARONE OF NPRS BOOKS WE LOVEA tender and funny story about love, family and the peculiar position of being a stepparent[Chilean Poet]broadens the authors scope and quite likely his international reputation. -Los Angeles TimesZambra [is] one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation. -The New York Review of BooksZambra'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.orgA 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 Gonzalos case, all the way to New York. Though Gonzalo takes his books when he goes, still, Vicente inherits his ex-stepfathers 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 Bolaos, but rather the living, striving, everyday ones. Prus 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.