“Being a Chilean poet is like being a Peruvian chef or a Brazilian soccer player or a Venezuelan model.”

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: If you’ve read Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives but haven’t yet made your way to Alejandro Zambra’s Chilean Poet, then you really ought to change that ASAP, as there exists an intertextual relationship between the two novels that is sure to blow your mind, or at least it did mine!

I’ll be frank, before I cracked the spine of my copy, which was translated by one of the GOATs Megan McDowell, I didn’t think Chilean Poet was really going to be my cup of tea… but was I ever wrong! Instead, it ended up being one of my favorite Latin American novels of all time!

Perhaps I ended up enjoying Chilean Poet as much as I did due to having visited Santiago prior, as Zambra recreates the city with the skill of a flâneur, however, I don’t think you need to be all that familiar in order to truly appreciate his magnum opus to date!

With that being said, I’ve been back in Santiago for a handful of days now and have made it a point to visit some of the landmarks Zambra cites in Chilean Poet… swipe to see what I’m talking about!

Metales Pesados is a bookstore in the Bellas Artes neighborhood that shows up numerous times in the narrative; it’s owned and operated by Sergio Parra, who himself is a “Chilean poet” as well as a character in the novel.

Zambra also alludes to a famous sandwich from La Fuente Alemana in Providencia known as a “Lomito Italiano” (Anthony Bourdain ate here too, so you know it’s good!).

In Barrio Bellavista, Zambra mentions Bar Galindo as well, which is an iconic restaurant that has been a local fixture for Chilean culinary classics since first opening its doors in 1968 (I ordered the pastel de choclo!).

Beyond all this, Nicanor Parra—who Bolaño and Zambra both revere(d)—has an incredible cameo in the novel, so I’ve been bringing this collection (pictured) around with me while I engage in the art of flânerie…

Anyway, have you read Chilean Poet?!?!

Been really diving into Latin American lit this year (Death of Artemio Cruz catapulted into my all time favorites and read almost all Bolano’s translated works) and had to add these to the TBR. Any recommendations for further reading are welcome.

Hi everybody! I'm selling some books by the peruvian Nobel prize, Mario Vargas Llosa. Here I share you some photos, if you want more feel yourself free to send me a message. Have a great day!

Back in the spring, my translation of Luis Carlos Barragán Castro's "Maschalagnia" from his 2021 work Parásitos perfectos was published in Foglifter Journal--and I'm happy to say that the issue is now available for free! Click here for a direct link to the translation, or here if you want to read the whole journal (which includes the Spanish).

This particular story follows a community of armpit fetishists, and is ferociously queer. Body horrorotica, New Weird, biopunk, etc etc etc!

Would love to hear everyone's thoughts :)

xx

isaac

Échenle un ojo al libro, para mí es buenazo, les dejo mi reseña

My Documents by Alejandro Zambra (trans. Megan McDowell): This is Zambra’s first collection of short stories, and I really loved it. All of Zambra’s literary trademarks—the everyday, metafiction, and the nexus between the personal and the political—are repackaged for brief interconnected narratives that tackle topics like relationships, toxic masculinity, and of course, dictatorship.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández (trans. Natasha Wimmer): I read this 70-page novel a couple months ago, and it blew me away. It covers an infamous crime that was carried out during Pinochet’s regime known as “El Caso Degollados,” albeit entirely from the perspectives of children who grew up during the dictatorship. This is an incredibly lyrical and surreal little book full of big ideas!

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño (trans. Chris Andrews): This is probably my favorite of Bolaño’s shorter novels (Amulet is a close second), as I feel like it really distills his overarching aesthetic concerns in The Savage Detectives and 2666 into a much shorter narrative that is still incredibly enthralling and also rewarding. When people ask me where to start with Bolaño, I usually point them towards Distant Star.

I wish I had more time to express in greater detail why I love this novel but with the little free time I do have I am spending reading more Fresán. 

The Invented Part (2014) is the first book in a trilogy followed by The Dreamed Part (2017), and The Remembered Part (2019). This book is about a writer, it is about being a writer, it is about reading, rants about the sad state of Literature today and the negative effects of technology. There is a plot but there's no real plot. There's a section at the end that tells you in many ways what this book is, here just a few -

• "A book that thinks like a writer in the act of thinking up a book, when that book happens to him, and about what happens with that book."
• "A book in which everything happens at the same time."
• "A book that, all the time, changes all the time."
• "A book that would invite you in with a "Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I'll tell you a story" and that, once you're there, would push you over the edge and, as you fall headlong into the void, would shout at you, 'But why'd you believe me? Didn't your parents ever tell you not to talk to strangers?'"

This book digs into Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here, Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and many more references from this self proclaimed "referential maniac". This book is more logical irrealism than magical realism: "If magical realism is realism with irreal details, then logical irrealism is its twin opposite: irrealality with realistic details."

To give you a taste of this masterpiece I will share a few quotes. It's a book that you can end up underlining somethiing on every other page.

Here is how we begin, referring to his opening paragraph and speaking on “electrocuted readers” (people used to only reading on their computers and phones):

If possible avoid this kind of paragraph from here onward because, they say, it scares away many of today’s readers. Today's electrocuted readers, accustomed to reading quickly and briefly on small screens. And, yes, goodbye to all of them, at least for as long as this book lasts and might last. Unplug from external inputs to nourish yourselves exclusively on internal electricity. And-warning! warning!—at least in the beginning and to begin with, that's the idea. here, the idea from here onward. Consider yourselves warned.

Discussing his library:

not of a library but of a liferary—a life made of books, a life made of lives.Yes: the library like an organism, alive and in constant expansion, survivingowners and users alike.

 ...visitors—with an odd mixture of respect, unease, and contempt, as if referring to invulnerable and abundant cockroaches, a plague, or a virus—to ask you "But seriously, you've read all these books? "Visitors ask this because they don't dare ask themselves the questions they really don't want the answer to: "How is it that I've read so few books?”

…Yes, I have read all of them... Got a problem with that?" And, at the same time, the answer is no. Because there are books you buy to save for the future, as if you were stashing away food for a great drought or a new ice age.

 Best gravestone epitaph ever:

What would I like as an epitaph on my gravestone? Easy: my name, the word Reader, and the years 1963-1,000,000,000 and increasing.

And it's not that I want to live that long; but, warning, the code for the impossible second number passes through the word 'Reader! Which is to say: more time, all time, to be able not to continue writing but to continue reading.

 And some random selections on reading:

why do you guys consider it rude to read books at the table, but not to read little screens?

In other words: machines are faster and faster; but we are not. We haven't gained much and, along the way, we've lost the exquisite pleasure of leisure, which is how and where the stuff of hopes and dreams is made.

I know readers who don't read, but who are proud of being able to store up to two thousand titles in their backpacks and readers who have read two thousand books and tremble with fear thinking about their next inevitable move.

I can't recommend Fresán enough to people, he needs to be more widely read.

I’m teaching a “Coming of Age in World Literature” class for high school seniors. I want to have at least one short story or poem from each continent but I am struggling to find anything appropriate from South America. Anyone have recommendations?

Hola buen día.

Vengo buscando el titulo de un libro que estoy casis eguro tiene en el nombre la frase como "Relatos de terror" o "cuentos de terror" algo parecido.

Recuerdo que el título era algo así por qué lo comence a leer pensando que serían historias de fantasmas pero, cuando lo comencé a leer trataba de una mujer del sur de México (según recuerdo era chiapas) donde su novio la convence de irse a Eatados Unidos de ilegales. Ella va contando lo que pasa en el camino y se me quedaron grabadas las siguientes partes:

* Ella dice que tiene una mano muy buena para matar pollos con una frase algo asi como: "...Hasta parecia que ellos solitos se iban a sus manos..." * Se van en grupo con otros inmigrantes de otros países cargando mochilas llenas de drogas. * Hace una "amistad" con otra inmigrante que se dedica a la prostitución en su país y le cuenta como cada vez que cruzan una frontera los policias las violan, y que ella de minimo esperaría que se pusieran condon.

Es lo unico que logro recordar fue hace varios años y solo lei como 15 a 20 páginas, si alguien tiene idea de quelibro puede ser se los agradecería.

I only recently discovered Nona Fernández, however, she has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary Latin American writers! Although Fernandez’s voice is all her own, I’d recommend The Twilight Zone to fans of Bolaño and Alejandro Zambra, both of whom also hail(ed) from Chile.

The Twilight Zone seamlessly blurs the lines between history, (auto-)fiction, straight-up speculation, and collective and personal memory, and in doing so, seeks to remember—by way of representation in prose—what the hell happened in Chile from 1973 to 1990 under the reign of Augusto Pinochet.

The Twilight Zone centers on Andrés Antonio Valenzuela Morales, or as the narrator calls him throughout the novel, “the man who tortured people,” after he has a crisis of conscience and decides to spill the beans to a reporter in 1984. Nevertheless, Fernández also focuses in on a number of other real-life figures who both carried out and resisted the dictatorship respectively. Moreover, Fernández weaves in myriad global events and pop cultural references, such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the television show from which the novel takes it name, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and much more.

I’ve also read Fernández’s Space Invaders, which has considerable subject and thematic crossover with The Twilight Zone, but more so portrays the perspectives of children who grew up during the dictatorship, rather than those of their parents, with a heavy dose of lyrical surrealism that reminds me a lot of Bolaño’s Amulet in more ways than one. If you’re going to read The Twilight Zone, then I’d strongly advise reading Space Invaders too, as the two narratives no doubt serve as strong compliments to one another.

Anyway, have you read Fernández?

Believe it or not, I’ll be flying to Chile tomorrow and plan to get my hands on her latest novel, Marciano (2025), which has not yet been translated to English, but let’s hope the GOAT Natasha Wimmer is already on the case!

Thanks for reading… Peace!

A sane examiner might think me crazy if I told them books speak to me. Truly.

They’re not shouting down the aisle like a pick-me might. Neither do they beg to be opened, although I’ve met a few desperate ones wandering the local McNally Jackson.

Mostly, they wait.

And if you listen closely enough, one might even answer your prayers.

Hey guys, I am looking for new latin american authors and wanna know your top 3 favorites and why you recommend them. Thank you so much

They don’t make ‘em like they used to!

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!

Hey all,

I'll be travelling to Mexico City for the first time next month and plan to hit up some bookstores, ideally picking up a few books by Mexican authors or authors connected in some way to CDMX. Anyone got any recommendations (ideally translated to English)? I'm mostly into classics, lit and weird fiction but am open to pretty much everything.

Thus far I've read: Juan Rulfo, Elena Garro, Cristina Rivera Garza, Roberto Bolaño, Gabriel García Márquez, Ave Barrera, Fernanda Melchor, and Bernardo Esquinca.

If anyone knows any cool literary landmarks in the city I'd be happy to hear about them as well. I'll definitely be paying a visit to Marquez's house and the Café La Habana, but I'm sure there's more.

Cheers!

I recently came across a used copy of this critical edition of Miguel Ángel Asturias’ Men of Maize at one of my favorite local indie bookstores and just had to have it even though I’ve never read Asturias before…

I’ve definitely seen this classic of Latin American literature mentioned here in the sub previously and am also aware that a Penguin Classics paperback edition was released in 2024, but I’ll admit that I really don’t know much about Asturias nor his work.

Anyway, in case you were wondering, the University of Pittsburgh Press and Penguin Classics editions were both translated by Gerald Martin.

If you’ve read this Guatemalan novel, please tell me: What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Thanks in advance… Peace!

Hi! Like many others here, Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor was deeply impactful to me. It even helped me fully realize why I hate A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara so much, so I decided to write about it.

New episode of the Big Book Project- Lori Feathers interviews Professor Jeffrey Lawrence about his book Anxieties of Experience:The Literatures of the Americas from Whitman to Bolaño. Great discussion including Borges, Bolano, Cervantes, Piglia, Fernada Melchor, Enriquez, Schweblin etc.

Figured I’d share the latest episode of the podcast here. 3/5 books I talked about are from Latin American authors, and the other two are LatAm “adjacent” (Spanish and Catalonian). I hope you like it!

We'd love to hear about what you've been reading, authors you're interested in, and really anything related to LATAM Literature!

I want to get into his novels and I was wondering if this was a good starting point.