Chilean Poet

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR n A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR n ONE OF NPR'S BOOKS WE LOVE nA 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 n nZambra [is] one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation. --The New York Review of Books n nZambra'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 n nA 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 n nAfter 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. n nEventually, 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? n nIn 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.n