A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S
BOOKS WE LOVE”A 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 TimesZambra'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 A 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 familyAfter 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. Eventually 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? In 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.
