“Taut and full of verve.” —The New York Times Book Review The landmark first novel of one of the greatest living Latin American writers—now in a sparkling new translation by his longtime collaborator When it was first published in 2006, then-literary critic and poet Alejandro Zambra’s first novel, Bonsai, caused a sensation. “It was said,” according to Chile’s newspaper of record, El Mercurio, “that it represented the end of an era, or the beginning of another, in the nation’s letters.” Zambra would go on to become a writer of international renown, winning prizes in Chile and around the world for his funny, tender, sly fictions. Here, in a brilliant new translation from four-time International Booker Prize nominee Megan McDowell, is the little book that started it all: The story of Julio and Emilia, two Chilean university students who, seeking truth in great literature, find one another instead. As they fall together and drift apart over the course of young adulthood, Zambra spins an emotionally engrossing, expertly distilled, formally inventive tale of love, art, and memory.
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Alejandro Zambra is the author of several books, including My Documents, a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is the recipient of numerous literary prizes and a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship, and his stories have appeared in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Granta, and Harper’s magazine, among others. He lives in Mexico City. Translator Megan McDowell is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been short- or long-listed four times for the International Booker Prize. She lives in Santiago, Chile.