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Essays
by Daniel Saldaña París
From one of Mexico's most exciting young writers, a cosmopolitan and candid essay collection exploring life in cities across the world and reflecting on the transformative importance of literature in understanding ourselves.
In ten intimate essays, Daniel Saldaña París explores the cities he has lived in, each one home to a new iteration of himself. In Mexico City he's a young poet eager to prove himself. In Montreal—an opioid addict desperate for relief. In Madrid—a lonely student seeking pleasure in grotesque extremes. These now diverging, now coalescing selves raise questions: Where can we find authenticity? How do we construct the stories that define us? What if our formative memories are closer to fiction than truth?
Saldaña París turns to literature and film, poetry and philosophy for answers. The result is a hybrid of memoir and criticism, "a sensory work, full of soundscapes, filth, planes, closed spaces, open vastness" (El País).
"These electric essays linger in the mind." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Expressing humor, provocation, and sincerity, Saldaña París delivers a rewarding reading experience in each essay." —Booklist (starred review)
"The author's knack for finding profundity in everything makes for an occasionally exhausting read; still, most of the pieces are thoughtful weavings of memory and place, explorations of how the author's heavy reading both informs—and, at times, obfuscates—his understanding of the past. Often heady, occasionally pretentious, and steeped in literary touchstones." —Kirkus Reviews
"A collection of ten essays [...]: each of them shot through with humor and forming a kind of Künstlerroman in their totality." —Literary Hub
"Daniel Saldaña París is simply one of our best living writers and this collection is destined for canonical status. Rarely have I read a book that so thoroughly challenges the boundaries of what nonfiction can be. I was awed by the prose and elevated by the depth and range of thought that imbues these pages, and when I finished reading them all, I started again at the beginning, unwilling and unable to leave the author's voice behind." —Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty
"Daniel Saldaña París writes about cities as labyrinths, with each new path twisting through memory and failure and searching and invention, leading readers to corridors where the intimate and the cosmic intersect. Planes Flying Over a Monster is a tremendous work of art." —Laura van den Berg, author of State of Paradise and The Third Hotel
"Planes Flying Over a Monster is a coming-of-age story written in the same kind of fragments that make up most minds in the 21st century. A lucid book about the surprising drugs to which we become addicted; a book about broken dreams, missed trips, romantic failures—the unwritten books that make up our identities. An unforgettable book for its self-mockery, at turns brutal and endearing." —Guadalupe Nettel, author of Still Born
This information about Planes Flying over a Monster 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.
Daniel Saldaña Paris is a Mexican writer based in New York and Mexico City. He is the author of the novels Among Strange Victims and Ramifications. In 2017, he was included on the prestigious Bogotá39 list.
Christina Macsweeney is an award-winning translator of Latin American literature. She has worked with such authors as Valeria Luiselli, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Julián Herbert, and Jazmina Barrera.
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Philip K. Zimmerman is a writer and translator from Spanish and German. His work has been presented in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Guernica, Necessary Fiction, the Berlin International Literature Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival.
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