THE NIGHT is a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010. The title of the book, originally also in English, is a gesture towards the failure of Chavism - the legacy of the Socialist and often controversial former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez - to resist US influence. Yet, the form is unapologetically literary, a reflection on the depiction and distortion of reality through storytelling. Recurring blackouts envelop Caracas in an inescapable darkness that makes nightmares come true. Real and fictional characters, most of whom are writers, play the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began at the same time as the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles. The author shifts between crime fiction and metafiction, cautioning readers that the events retold are both true and manipulated.

The protagonists of these seven stories are already defeated by their own messianism. They retrospectively recount the unjust circumstances that turned them into victims or criminals. The cast of antiheroes in Sacrifices includes a blind man, Tiresias, that seeks intimacy in a labyrinthic Mexico City; a dying pilot who finds solace reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery on a beach in Biarritz; and a taxidermist painter who predicts various Venezuelan massacres in his own Guernica. These revelatory short stories tread the line between surrealism and realism, proving that fiction is always political. Despite the international settings, Blanco Calderon's mythical characters are the product of a Venezuelan legacy of martyrs whose sacrifices failed to lead the country to democracy.

Simpatia is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina's departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Mart­n Ayala. Thanks to Ayala's will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission - to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina. This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez. The untranslatable title, Simpatia, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.

THE NIGHT is a political novel about the financial crisis and socio-political division in Venezuela from 2008 to 2010. The title of the book, originally also in English, is a gesture towards the failure of Chavism - the legacy of the Socialist and often controversial former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez - to resist US influence. Yet, the form is unapologetically literary, a reflection on the depiction and distortion of reality through storytelling. Recurring blackouts envelop Caracas in an inescapable darkness that makes nightmares come true. Real and fictional characters, most of whom are writers, play the role of narrator in this polyphonic novel. They recount contradictory versions of the plot, a series of femicides that began at the same time as the energy crisis. The central narrator is a psychiatrist who manipulates the accounts of his friend, an author writing a book titled The Night; and his patient, an advertising executive obsessed with understanding the world through word puzzles. The author shifts between crime fiction and metafiction, cautioning readers that the events retold are both true and manipulated.

The protagonists of these seven stories are already defeated by their own messianism. They retrospectively recount the unjust circumstances that turned them into victims or criminals. The cast of antiheroes in Sacrifices includes a blind man, Tiresias, that seeks intimacy in a labyrinthic Mexico City; a dying pilot who finds solace reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery on a beach in Biarritz; and a taxidermist painter who predicts various Venezuelan massacres in his own Guernica. These revelatory short stories tread the line between surrealism and realism, proving that fiction is always political. Despite the international settings, Blanco Calderon's mythical characters are the product of a Venezuelan legacy of martyrs whose sacrifices failed to lead the country to democracy.

Simpatia is set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulina's departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and the death of his father-in-law, General Mart­n Ayala. Thanks to Ayala's will, Ulises discovers that he has been entrusted with a mission - to transform Los Argonautas, the great family home, into a shelter for abandoned dogs. If he manages to do it in time, he will inherit the luxurious apartment that he had shared with Paulina. This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simon Bolivar to Hugo Chavez. The untranslatable title, Simpatia, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.