Daniel Alarcón - Böcker

‘Lost City Radio’ is a poignant and deeply moving novel from a promising new author, which looks intensely at war's damaging effect on society and the individual.Ever since the civil war that took her husband ended, Norma has been the voice of consolation to a people broken by violence. Every week, bereft families listen to her radio show as she reads out the names of the missing, those who vanished in the clamour and brutality of the drawn-out conflict, with the hope of reuniting the few survivors with their families. Successes are few; her true gift is the offer of hope.Although her face is unknown to her listeners, her name and spirit are celebrated by a wayward nation searching for a guiding force. But her life is forever changed when a young boy from a jungle village enters her radio studio and provides a connection to the husband she thought lost – the husband she has not seen for ten years since departing for the war. Her story and those tangled up in it reveal a country in flux, desperately seeking signs of life, and reasons to continue, amongst pain and uncertainty.Stunning, timely, powerful and absolutely mesmerizing, ‘Lost City Radio’ probes the deepest questions of war: from its wide reaching affect on a society to its intimate emotional impact on every person involved. This searing yet tender first novel marks Alarcón's emergence as a new voice in American fiction, fully-formed and ready to be heard.

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction An unforgettable collection of stories from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40, and one of the best storytellers of our time. Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In Daniel Alarcón’s hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes.In ‘The Thousands’, people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in ‘The Bridge’. A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in ‘The Ballad of Rocky Rontal’. And in the tour de force novella, ‘The Auroras’, a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman.Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.

LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZEThe breakout book from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40: a breathtaking, suspenseful search for the truth of one man’s spectacular downfall.Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country and moved to the United States, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, with legendary guerrilla theatre troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins.The tour takes Nelson across a landscape scarred by years of civil war. Forging bonds with his fellow actors, he becomes hopelessly entangled in their lives, until a long-buried betrayal erupts into chaos.Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZEA breathtaking, suspenseful search for the truth of one man’s spectacular downfall, from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40.Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country and moved to the United States, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson’s hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theatre troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins.The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape he’s never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos.Nelson’s fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson’s story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.

American Odysseys is an anthology of twenty-two novelists, poets, and short-story writers drawn from the shortlist for the 2011 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature. Including Ethiopian-born Dinaw Mengestu, the recipient of the Prize; Yugoslavian-born Téa Obreht, the youngest author to receive the Orange Prize in Fiction; and Chinese-born Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Genius grantee, what these authors all have in common—and share with US Poet Laureate Charles Simic, who has contributed a foreword—is that they are immigrants to the United States, now excelling in their fields and dictating the terms by which future American writing will be judged by the world. Running the gamut from desperate realism to whimsical fantasy—from Miho Nonaka’s poetry, inspired by fourteenth-century Noh theater, to Ismet Prcic’s wrenching stories set in the aftermath of the Bosnian war—American Odysseys is proof, if any be needed, that the heterogeneity of American society is its greatest asset.