From the author of My Documents and Chilean Poet, a wise, humorous, and captivating literary exploration of the delights and absurdities of childhood, fatherhood, and family life
Childish Literature is a charming and wide-ranging collection of short stories, essays, and even a couple of poems produced under the influence of fatherhood, a transformative experience that reshapes and enlivens the author's relationship to aging, intimacy, and time. Written in Alejandro Zambra’s brilliantly warm, playful, and philosophical voice, these pieces explore the lives of families and their stories through a wide variety of topics—from screen time and "soccer sadness" to personal libraries, fishing, and psychedelics. Throughout, Zambra captures the texture of daily life and deep truths about how we feel and live, with particular insight into the ways parents and children challenge, enrich, and entertain each other.
Simultaneously lighthearted and profound, and brilliantly rendered by National Book Award-winning translator Megan McDowell, Childish Literature is an intimate and unclassifiable new work by an internationally celebrated writer.
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"“Whenever Alejandro Zambra brings out a new book, I’m excited to read it . . . On every page there’ll be something that makes me laugh out loud, no matter if what’s being narrated is devastating or—like this new book—luminously tender. In Childish Literature, Zambra’s account of fatherhood is so generous, self-deprecating and infectious that I ended up feeling like a more attentive, entertaining and knowing first-time dad than I probably am, and a more self-forgiving one too."
— Francisco Goldman, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Monkey Boy
“Hopeful, funny, and full of wisdom. A meditation on fatherhood by one of our most perceptive writers.
— Tara Westover, New York Times bestselling author of EducatedWhat a rare and wonderful experience, to read a writer of such brilliance, wit and style as Alejandro Zambra on the subjects of fatherhood and childhood. I relished every page of this beautiful, surprising book.
— Mark O’Connell, author of A Thread of Violence"Hopeful, funny, and full of wisdom. A meditation on fatherhood by one of our most perceptive writers.
— Tara Westover, New York Times bestselling author of Educated“Hopeful, funny, and full of wisdom. A meditation on fatherhood by one of our most perceptive writers.
— Tara Westover, New York Times bestselling author of EducatedBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
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.