My Documents

(Paperback)

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Description

Archived in a folder on award-winning author Alejandro Zambra's desktop are eleven 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.

Reviews

People kept mentioning his name, but I was slow to encounter the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra. I hadnt read anything by him before opening his new story collection, My Documents [] My Documents is the fourth book by Alejandro Zambra to be translated into English (this one very ably by Megan McDowell). All of them are very short and strikingly original, and display a wry self-consciousness about the obligations, difficulties, and pleasures of writing fiction. [] In his new book, Zambra returns to the twin sources of his talentto his storytelling vitality, that living tree which blossoms often in these pages, and to his unsparing examination of recent Chilean history. These come together magnificently.
James Wood, New Yorker

[An] excellent collection [] rich and thought-provoking [] If you are going to read Alejandro Zambra, which you should, don't just read My Documents, read everything he's done.
Chris Power, Guardian

These stories are graceful, grave, comical, disabused. I guess what I mean is: My Documents represents a new form. When I think about Alejandro Zambra, I feel happy for the future of fiction.
Adam Thirlwell, author of Lurid and Cute

Alejandro Zambras My Documents is also his best: an eclectic, disconcerting, at times harrowing read. His voice is unique, honest and raw, and there is poetry on every page. Zambras fiction doubles as a kind of personal history, full of anguish, humour and verve. A truly beautiful book.
Daniel Alarcn, author of At Night We Walk in Circles

Zambra is the author of small classics short in length, but enormous in every other way. My Documents elevates him to a entirely new level.
Valeria Luiselli, author of Faces in the Crowd

Author Bio

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.