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Archived in a folder on award-winning author Alejandro Zambra's desktop are 11 stories of liars and ghosts, armed bandits and young lovers. Intimate, mysterious, and uncanny, these stories reveal a mind that is as undeniably singular as it is universal. Together, they constitute the debut short-story collection from Zambra, whose first novel was heralded as a "bloodletting in Chilean literature."
Whether chronicling the return of a mercurial godson or the disappearance of a trusted cousin, the worlds of these stories are so powerful and deep that the works might better be described as brief novels. My Documents is by turns hilarious and heart-stopping, tragic and tender, but most of all, it is unflinchingly human and essential evidence of a sublimely talented writer working at the height of his powers.
"Starred Review. Funny, sad, sometimes rambling and sometimes exact, Zambra's stories convey with striking honesty what it's like to be Chilean today: adrift and confused, uncertain of institutions, relationships, or the future." - Publishers Weekly
"Winningly arch and unusual takes on common household predicaments." - Kirkus
This information about My Documents was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alejandro Zambra is a Chilean writer, poet, and critic. He currently teaches literature at the Diego Portales University in Santiago. His first novel, Bonsai, was awarded Chile's Literary Critics' Award for Best Novel. Also the author of The Private Lives of Trees and Ways of Going Home, he was selected as one of the Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists by Granta in 2010. He lives in Santiago, Chile.
Megan McDowell lives in Zurich, Switzerland.
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