Alejandro Zambra

"Veronica 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. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Julián finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life-of their lives together"--

Condenado a la seriedad y a la impostura, Julio, el silencioso protagonista de este libro, acaba convenciéndose de que es mejor encerrarse en su cuarto a observar el crecimiento de un bonsái que vagar por los incómodos caminos de la literatura. Este relato elíptico y vertiginoso está marcado por la inquietante desaparición de una mujer. Jorge Luis Borges aconsejaba escribir como si se estuviera redactando el resumen de una obra ya escrita....

"NAMED ONE OF The best BOOKS OF THE SUMMER BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST AND PUREWOW "Latin America's new literary star."--The New Yorker "Brilliant. Like a literary exercise for the mind, but strangely fun to decode."--Elle "The most talked-about writer to come out of Chile since Bolaño," (The New York Times Book Review), Alejandro Zambra is celebrated around the world for his strikingly original, slyly funny, daringly unconventional...

The writer son of a quiet sympathizer with the Pinochet regime reflects on the progress of his novel, in which an unnamed boy from a Chilean suburb witnesses an earthquake and meets an older girl who asks him to spy on her uncle.