Chilean Poet

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF NPR'S "BOOKS WE LOVE"

"A tender and funny story about love, family and the peculiar position of being a stepparent...[Chilean Poet] broadens the author's scope and quite likely his international reputation." --Los Angeles Times

"Zambra'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.org

A 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 family

After 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 Gonzalo's case, all the way to New York. Though Gonzalo takes his books when he goes, still, Vicente inherits his ex-stepfather's 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 Bolaños, but rather the living, striving, everyday ones. Pru's 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.

Author: Alejandro Zambra
Publisher: Viking
Published: 02/15/2022
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.24lbs
Size: 9.29h x 6.31w x 1.25d
ISBN: 9780593297940


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/2021 pg. 8
Kirkus Reviews 12/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 12/20/2021
Library Journal 02/01/2022 pg. 66

About the Author
Alejandro Zambra is the author of Multiple Choice; My Documents, a finalist for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award; and three previous novels: Ways of Going Home, The Private Lives of Trees, and Bonsai. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, as well as a Cullman Center fellowship, his stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta and Harper's, among others. He lives in Mexico City. Megan McDowell (translator) is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards, and has been short- or long-listed for the Booker International prize four times. Her translations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Atlantic, and Harper's. She lives in Santiago, Chile.