Family Album: Stories

(Paperback)

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Description

This book is readable and fun, while dealing with serious topics like femicide, ecological devastation, the drug wars and more.

Gabriela Alemn is one of the most accomplished South American authors working today, and her short fiction and novels have been published in multiple languages.

Poso Wells, Alemns first work to be published in English translation (City Lights, 2018), received the Indies Introduce Award and IndieNext from the ABA, and was a Staff Pick at numerous indie bookstores.

Poso Wells was met with enthusiastic critical reviews from the New Yorker,Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and World Literature Today and we expect a similar reception to the new book.

Fans will be psyched to see this follow up, which features all of the irony, humor, and well researched historical and political content that made Poso Wells a gem.

Cover design of Family Album will be reminiscent of Poso Wells, providing visual clues about the connection between Alemn's debut and follow up.

Poso Wells continues to be a favorite at indie bookstores, three years after its first publication! It was recently featured as a staff pick at Powells Books (OR), including the booksellers blurb on their marquee!

Gabriela Alemn is a vibrant and compelling author who charmed booksellers and media at BEA 2018.

Reviews

Praise for Family Album by Gabriela Alemn

"The book is a work of art.Lanie Tankard, World Literature Today

"Alemns stories feature carefully wrought narratives and vibrant characterizations, and are written in a style with a remarkable lightness of touch."Eugenie Dalland, The Los Angeles Review of Books

"In this collection of short stories, the gifted Ecuadorian author, Gabriela Alemn, offers up a fierce and funny family album of present-day South America, particularly Ecuador. From scuba divers hunting for treasure to a reporters search for the secret of a famous Mexican wrestler and a baroness who settles on one of the Galapagos Islands in the 1930s, the characters in these stories are a fascinatingly endless range of humanity that Alemn writes, and Dick Cluster and Mary Ellen Fieweger translate, with wit and grace."Pierce Alquist, Book Riot "Family Album, from award-winning author Gabriela Alemn, is a shrewd, beguiling collection. In eight genre-defying stories, the Brazil-born, Ecuador-based Alemn deftly confronts push-button topics like colonialism, identity and religion."Terry Hong, Smithsonian Book Dragon

"Memorable characters abound in Family Album, a collection of eight witty, compact, and highly entertaining stories by Gabriela Alemn, translated by Dick Cluster and Mary Ellen Fieweger."David Conrads, The Christian Science Monitor

"Gabriela Alemn writes with a tender but glass-hard touch: There's a fierce honesty to those tales, a surprise in each, and a dizzying sense of wonder on completing each one."Achy Obejas, author of Boomerang / Bumern: Poetry / Poesa (Raised Voices)

"This collection of short stories from Alemn gives color and texture to the tapestry of the Ecuadorian experience. Albeit short, these stories give her characters enough room to maneuver to elicit empathy, melancholy, and a little bit of laughter from her readers. From murderous spies to treasure hunters literally way out of their depth and from luchador movie stars to an American about to discover that the Amazon is not to be trifled with, these stories confirm Alemns talent and her status as one of the ambassadors of Ecuadorian literature."Bennard Fajardo, Politics and Prose, Washington DC

"Alemns eclectic short stories left traces that unexpectedly popped up and demanded my attention again: why this, how that The stories meander around Ecuador to places where mysteries may be solved or deepened, where curiosity may be rewarded and lack of curiosity punished, and where characters range from kind to cruel, outlandish to simple, but always one-of-a-kind."Kay Wosewick, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, WI

"This short story collection is broken up into snapshots found in your typical family photo album (i.e. vacation, marriage, summer). My favorites include: scuba divers search for pirate treasure; a scandalous German baroness who settles on one of the Galapagos Islands in the 1930's; a recently widowed woman discovers her late husband's double life; and a reporter's search for the closely held secret of a famous Mexican wrestler. The stories are written in a variety of genres and show that you have to look under the surface to see the real Ecuador. This book is dark, mysterious, funny, and occasionally creepyeverything I love in modern literature."Amy Walterscheid, Powell's Books, Portland, OR

"We never know for sure what Gabriela Alemns characters are up to. Intrigue, deception, and seduction are right around the corner. Maybe this is because the worlds Alemn createsat once explicit and evocativeare contested terrain, never solid ground. There, broken souls contend with noble ones in search of new lives, for History seems to have left them all in its wake. Approach these stories with caution: the pervasive underground voices that drive the characters will take the reader prisoner as well."Rodrigo Fuentes, author ofTrout, Belly Up

"I am stunned by Gabriela Alemns ability to shift the settings of her stories, transform the textures of her prose, and populate her narrative with such a variety of characters.Family Albumis a compendium of all the writers who coexist inside her. I still dont know how she manages to be so good in so many different ways."Antonio Garca ngel, author ofSu Casa Es Mi Casa

"Gabriela Alemn knows that the best way to depict the extended family of the nation is to include everyone from the heroic grandparents to the outcast aunts and uncles and the lost cousins. In her stories we discover an Ecuador more complex and diverse than the one we knew before. This is a magnificent book to enter the universe of this indispensable author."Edmundo Paz Soldn, author ofTurings Delirium

Gabriela Alemns stories pack all the intrigue of a novel into just a few short scenes. 'Summer Vacation,' set on the ever-mysterious Galapagos off the coast of Ecuador, is a haunting tale that youll want to read with the lights onand to check over your shoulder after you turn the final page." Karen Abbott,author ofThe Ghosts of Eden Park

"Gabriela Alemn takes us through the back alleys of Ecuadors cultural imagination, conjuring up buccaneers and baronesses, luchador movie stars, Biddy Basketball Leagues, and someone named Lorena Bobbitt. The stories in Family Album are dark, witty, and beautifully strange. Reading Alemn is like trying to touch the seabed with your toes: the depths of her craft are seemingly endless."Stephan Sebastian Herrera, 2021 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow

"It's no easy feat to convey the gamut of human experience in any single text, yetFamily Albumdoes just that: the writing enthralls its reader with beautifully executed portraits of the human race in all its indignity, desire, rage, and poignancy. Alemn crafts her stories with the touch of an ultimate seeker."Eugenie Dalland, editor of Riot of Perfume Magazine

"A fresh, vibrant, and original look at a fascinating part of the world that few of us here in the United States know much about."Dalt Wonk, author of French Quarter Fables

"GabrielaAlemn's mesmerizing prose takes us places weve never been to meet and understand people whose lives on the margins of society she depicts with profound psychological acuity and compassion."Josephine Sacabo, author of Structures of Reverie

Praise for Poso Wells by Gabriela Alemn

"Poso Wellsis ironic, audacious, and fierce. But what is it, exactly A satire A scifi novel A political detective yarn Or the purest reality of contemporary Latin America. It's unclassifiableas all great books are."Samanta Schweblin, author ofFever Dream

"One part Thomas Pynchon, one part Gabriel Garca Marquez, and one part Raymond Chandler, Alemn's novel contains mystery, horror, humor, absurdity, and political commentary . . . A concoction of political thriller and absurdist literary mystery that never fails to entertain."Kirkus Reviews

"The story is a condemnation not only of the corrupt businessmen and the criminal gangs that rule Poso Wells but also of the violence against women that plagues Latin America's real slums."The New Yorker

"Poso Wellsis an intriguing name for a thrilling novel of politics, environmental destruction and wildly imaginative occurrences that slide right to the edge of reality. The landscape includes the threatened rape of a cloud forest, a collection of fantastical blind heroes, and a presidential candidate who pees himself to death on stage. The English translation is fast and clear as the story rolls towards its ending on a steaming volcano. The first English translation of noted Brazilian-Ecuadorian novelist, Gabriela Alemn. I hope that many more follow."Stephen Williams,author of Blockchain: The Next Everything

Author Bio

Gabriela Alemn was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Shereceived a PhD at Tulane University and holds a Master's degree in Latin American Literature from Universidad Andina Simn Bolvar. She currently resides in Quito, Ecuador. Her literary honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006; member of Bogot 39, a 2007 selection of the most important up-and-coming writers in Latin America in the post-Boom generation; one of five finalists for the 2015 Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel Garca Mrquez (Colombia) for hershortstory collectionLa muerte silba un blues; and winner of several prizes for critical essays on literature and film.Her novelPoso Wellswas published in English translation by City Lights in 2018, followed up with the publication of her short story collection Family Album, also published in English translation by City Lights in 2022. She lives in Quito, Ecuador.

Dick Clusterhas translated four books for City Lights includingIn the Cold of the Malecn and Other Stories(2000) by Antonio Jos Ponte,Frigid Tales(2002) by Pedro de Jesus,A Corner of the World(2014) by Mylene Fernndez-Pintado, andPoso Wells(2018) by Gabriela Alemn. His own novels include Return to Sender (1988), Repulse Monkey (1989), and Obligations of the Bone (1992). Cluster lives in Oakland, California.

Mary Ellen Fieweger has translated a number of books, including Wolves Dreamby Abdn Ubidia, Clios Laws: On History and Languageby Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, and two anthologies of short stories by Ecuadorian writers: Ten Stories from Ecuador/Diez cuentistas ecuatorianos and Contemporary Ecuadorian Short Stories. Her own works include Es un monstruo grande y pisa fuerte: la minera en el Ecuador y el mundo and A History of Ecuador/Una historia del Ecuador. Fieweger lives in Ecuador.