Naoki Higashida was only thirteen when he wrote The Reason I Jump (view on Amazon), a revelatory account of autism from the inside by a nonverbal Japanese child, which became an international success. Now, in Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, he shares his thoughts and experiences as a young man living each day with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, Higashida explores school memories, family relationships, the exhilaration of travel, and the difficulties of speech. He also allows readers to experience profound moments we take for granted, like the thought-steps necessary for him to register that it’s raining outside. Acutely aware of how strange his behavior can appear to others, he aims throughout to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage society to see people with disabilities as people, not as problems.
With an introduction by the bestselling novelist David Mitchell, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 also includes a dreamlike short story Higashida wrote especially for the U.S. edition. Both moving and of practical use, this book opens a window into the mind of an inspiring young man who meets every challenge with tenacity and good humor. However often he falls down, he always gets back up.
“[Naoki Higashida’s] success as a writer now transcends his diagnosis. . . . His relative isolation—with words as his primary connection to the outside world—has allowed him to fully develop the powers of observation that are necessary for good writing, and he has developed rich, deep perspectives on ideas that many take for granted. . . . The diversity of Higashida’s writing, in both subject and style, fits together like a jigsaw puzzle of life put in place with humor and thoughtfulness.” —The Japan Times
“Profound insights about what the struggle of living with autism is really like . . . the invitation to step inside Higashida’s mind is irresistible.” —London Evening Standard
“Naoki Higashida’s lyrical and heartfelt account of his condition is a gift to anyone involved with the same challenges…Higashida shows a delicate regard for the difficulties his condition creates…and is adept at explaining his experiences in language that makes sense to neurotypicals.” —The Guardian
Before the Coffee Gets Cold
A quirky, sigh-inducingly satisfying read that is now an international bestseller
If you could go back, who would you want to meet?
In a small back alley of Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee—the chance to travel back in time.
Over the course of one summer, four customers visit the café in the hopes of making that journey. But time travel isn’t so simple, and there are rules that must be followed. Most important, the trip can last only as long as it takes for the coffee to get cold.
Heartwarming, wistful, mysterious and delightfully quirky, Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s internationally bestselling novel explores the age-old question: What would you change if you could travel back in time?
“An affecting, deeply immersive journey into the desire to hold onto the past. This wondrous tale will move readers.” —Publishers Weekly
“Perfect for anyone who wants to feel connected right now.” —Book Reporter
Note: We’ve also found the book to be great on audio.
City of Strife
130 years have passed since Arathiel last set foot in his home city. Isandor hasn’t changed—bickering merchant families still vie for power through eccentric shows of wealth—but he has. His family is long dead, a magical trap has dulled his senses, and he returns seeking a sense of belonging now long lost.
Arathiel hides in the Lower City, piecing together a new life among in a shelter dedicated to the homeless and the poor, befriending an uncommon trio: the Shelter’s rageful owner, Larryn, his dark elven friend Hasryan, and Cal the cheese-loving halfling. When Hasryan is accused of Isandor's most infamous assassination of the last decade, what little peace Arathiel has managed to find for himself is shattered. Hasryan is innocent… he thinks. In order to save him, Arathiel may have to shatter the shreds of home he’d managed to build for himself.
Arathiel could appeal to the Dathirii—a noble elven family who knew him before he disappeared—but he would have to stop hiding, and they have battles of their own to fight. The idealistic Lord Dathirii is waging a battle of honour and justice against the cruel Myrian Empire, objecting to their slavery, their magics, and inhumane treatment of their apprentices. One he could win, if only he could convince Isandor’s rulers to stop courting Myrian’s favours for profit.
In the ripples that follow Diel’s opposition, friendships shatter and alliances crumble. Arathiel, the Dathirii, and everyone in Isandor fights to preserve their homes, even if the struggle changes them irrevocably.
City of Strife is the first installment of the City of Spires trilogy, a multi-layered political fantasy led by an all LGBTQIAP+ cast. Fans of complex storylines criss-crossing one another, elves and magic, and strong friendships and found families will find everything they need within these pages.
Note: Arseneault is an asexual & aromantic-spectrum writer who writes sci fi & fantasy led by aromantic & asexual heroes. She also maintains a database of aro & ace characters & books from a large variety of writers. City of Strife includes an asexual aromantic character & a graysexual character. If these terms are new to you: An asexual (aka “ace”) is someone who does not experience sexual attraction. An aromantic (aka “aro”) is a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others. A graysexual is someone who experiences limited sexual attraction (i.e., they experience sexual attraction very rarely or with very low intensity).
Barrio Rising
Blending rich narrative accounts with incisive analyses of urban space, politics, and everyday life, Barrio Rising offers a sweeping reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen not by its leaders but by residents of one of the country’s most distinctive popular neighborhoods.
Beginning in the late 1950s political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as Latin America’s most stable democracy. But outside the staid halls of power, in the gritty barrios of a rapidly urbanizing country, another politics was rising—unruly, contentious, and clamoring for inclusion.
In the mid-1950s, a military government bent on modernizing Venezuela razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city’s working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: el veintitrés (the 23rd).
During the next 30 years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, and official neglect, inhabitants of el veintitrés learned to use their strategic location and symbolic tie to the promise of democracy in order to demand a better life. Granting legitimacy to the state through the vote but protesting its failings with violent street actions when necessary, they laid the foundation for an expansive understanding of democracy—both radical and electoral—whose features still resonate today.
“Barrio Rising should appeal to both the general public and specialists, possessing the rare quality of being highly accessible and scholarly in equal measure. This is an exemplary effort of combining archival and ethnographic research to demystify one of Venezuela’s most politically charged neighborhoods, and in doing so, provides crucial insights into the country’s often volatile and complex political history.” —Latin Americanist
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
Blue Label
Winner of the Arturo Uslar Pietri award for Latin American literature & shortlisted for the Critics Award of Venezuela
Eugenia Blanc, a young Caraqueñan and quintessential teenager at war with the world around her, has one aim: after graduating from high school, to abandon Venezuela definitively. She embarks on a spontaneous road trip in a banged-up Fiat with her rebellious classmate Luis Tévez, in search of her grandfather, the one person who can provide her with the documents that would allow her to leave the country. While Eugenia and Luis’s tentative, troubled romance unfolds during the Chávez era, the story also looks back at Venezuela’s “lost decade” of the 1990s, a time of intractable violence, inequality, corruption, and instability that led to Chávez’s election.
With an unvarnished fluidity that brings to mind Jack Kerouac and a crazy-ass playlist that ranges from REM to Bob Dylan to El Canto del Loco to Shakira, Blue Label is an audacious, dark novel with a gut-punch of an ending; the prize-winning book by a writer who has cemented his reputation as a major Latin American voice.
“Blue Label is a wickedly well-written novel, with electric prose that delivers one jolt after another, a subtle and joyful sense of humor, an intoxicating infectiousness, a complex character about whom we want to know everything, and an ending that leaves the reader with a feeling of sweet melancholy. It’s a book we’ll be talking about for years to come.” ―Daniel Saldaña París
“One part Scheherazade, two parts Boccaccio, a twist of Bolaño, and a dash of bitters. Blue Label is intoxicating, hilarious, and the best novel on the calamity that is today's Venezuela.” —Carmen Boullosa
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
Colaterales/Collateral
A winner of the prestigious poetry award named for the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz—in a special bilingual edition featuring English and Spanish translations.
These poems were written during days spent clearing river debris while living along the Hudson River in Manhattan after moving from Venezuela. However, the global perspective is clearly shown with poems that speak of the wanderings of a nomadic subject who erases and rewrites in an imaginary landscape.
The Paz Prize for Poetry is presented by the National Poetry Series and The Center at Miami Dade College. This annual award—named in the spirit of the late Nobel Prize–winning poet, Octavio Paz—honors a previously unpublished book of poetry written originally in Spanish by an American resident.
“Di Donato's poetry exhibits a tremendous control of language...She is both ancient and contemporary. . . a vital poet who honors the memory of Octavio Paz.” —Victor Hernández Cruz
(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)
Doña Barbara
Rómulo Gallegos is best known for being Venezuela’s first democratically elected president. But in his native land, he is equally famous as a writer responsible for one of Venezuela’s literary treasures, the novel Doña Barbara. Published in 1929 and all but forgotten by Anglophone readers, Doña Barbara is one of the first examples of magical realism, laying the groundwork for later authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Following the epic struggle between two cousins for an estate in Venezuela, Doña Barbara is an examination of the conflict between town and country, violence and intellect, male and female. Doña Barbara is a beautiful and mysterious woman—rumored to be a witch—with a ferocious power over men. When her cousin Santos Luzardo returns to the plains in order to reclaim his land and cattle, he reluctantly faces off against Doña Barbara, and their battle becomes simultaneously one of violence and seduction. All of the action is set against the stunning backdrop of the Venezuelan prairie, described in loving detail. Gallegos’s plains are filled with dangerous ranchers, intrepid cowboys, and damsels in distress, all broadly and vividly drawn. A masterful novel with an important role in the inception of magical realism, Doña Barbara is a suspenseful tale that blends adventure, fantasy, and romance.
Hailed as “the Bovary of the llano” and “possibly the most widely known Latin American novel,” Doña Barbara features a magnetic and memorable heroine, who has inspired numerous adaptations on the big and small screens.
“Remarkable. . . . From its first pages it reveals . . . why it made Gallegos famous. . . . If Señor Gallegos is one-half as good a President as he is a novelist, Venezuela is a lucky land.” ―New York Times
“An exciting heroic tale of the life of Venezuelan plainsmen, master and peons, ranchers and cowboys and horse thieves.” ―New Republic
(A special thank you to book club member, Jordi Valbuena for the suggestion.)
It Would be Night in Caracas
In Caracas, Venezuela, Adelaida Falcón stands over an open grave. Alone, she buries her mother—the only family she has ever known—and worries that when night falls thieves will rob the grave. Even the dead cannot find peace here.
Adelaida had a stable childhood in a prosperous Venezuela that accepted immigrants in search of a better life, where she lived with her single-mother in a humble apartment. But now? Every day she lines up for bread that will inevitably be sold out by the time she reaches the registers. Every night she tapes her windows to shut out the tear gas raining down on protesters. When looters masquerading as revolutionaries take over her apartment, Adelaida must make a series of gruesome choices in order to survive in a country disintegrating into anarchy, where citizens are increasingly pitted against each other. But just how far is she willing to go?
A bold new voice from Latin America, Karina Sainz Borgo’s touching, thrilling debut is an ode to the Venezuelan people and a chilling reminder of how quickly the world we know can crumble.
“Dry, concise, direct, with an extraordinary stirring force… Sainz Borgo’s novel is simply masterful.” —Fernando Aramburu
(Group read suggestion from Mia DeGiovine Chaveco, book club co-founder.)
The Last Days of El Commandante
President Hugo Chávez’s cancer looms large over Venezuela in 2012, casting a shadow of uncertainty and creating an atmosphere of secrets, lies, and upheaval across the country. This literary thriller follows the connected lives of several Caracas neighbors consumed by the turmoil surrounding the Venezuelan president’s impending death.
Retired oncologist Miguel Sanabria, seeing the increasingly combustible world around him, feels on constant edge. He finds himself at odds with his wife, an extreme anti-Chavista, and his radical Chavista brother. These feelings grow when his nephew asks him to undertake the perilous task of hiding cell-phone footage of Chávez in Cuba. Fredy Lecuna, an unemployed journalist, takes a job writing a book about Chávez’s condition, which requires him to leave for Cuba while his landlord attempts to kick his wife and son out of their apartment. Nine-year-old María, long confined to an apartment with a neurotic mother intensely fearful of the city’s violence, finds her only contact with the outside world through a boy she messages online.
“The stories Barrera Tyszka presents [in The Last Days of El Comandante] offer a solid slice of the uncertainty of Venezuelan life of the time…Barrera Tyszka is particularly good on the everyday—and also on the odd Cuban connection and the complex interplay between Cuban (national and personal) interests and Venezuelan ones at the time.” —The Complete Review
(A special thank you to book club member, Elke Richelsen for the suggestion.)
After Elias
2021 Edmund White Award Finalist
When the airplane piloted by Elias Santos crashes one week before their wedding day, Coen Caraway loses the man he loves and the illusion of happiness he has worked so hard to create. The only thing Elias leaves behind is a recording of his final words, and even Coen is baffled by the cryptic message.
Numb with grief, he takes refuge on the Mexican island that was meant to host their wedding. But as fragments of the past come to the surface in the aftermath of the tragedy, Coen is forced to question everything he thought he knew about Elias and their life together. Beneath his flawed memory lies the truth about Elias—and himself.
From the damp concrete of Vancouver to the spoiled shores of Mexico, After Elias weaves the past with the present to tell a story of doubt, regret, and the fear of losing everything.
”Arresting... [a] deftly crafted novel.” ―Foreword Reviews
“Tan has written an immersive, unpredictable, engaging novel propelled by mystery, softened by tenderness, and enriched with little wisdoms.” ―Patrick Nathan, noted author
”Tan has crafted a page turner from a set of unlikely ingredients—tragedy, grief, pain and the darker shadows of the human mind. But most of all he has written tenderly, resplendently, about love.” —Christopher J. Yates, noted author
”It's rare to find a book that works well as a deeply emotional exploration of grief and as a suspenseful thriller, but After Elias manages this feat.” —Booklist
Cobalt Blue
A literary sensation in South Asia, this memorable novel confronts issues of sexuality in India through a love triangle with a brother and sister falling for the same man. Cobalt Blue is a tale of rapturous love and fierce heartbreak told with tenderness and unsparing clarity.
Brother and sister Tanay and Anuja both fall in love with an artist lodging in their family home in Pune, Western India. He seems like the perfect tenant, ready with the rent and happy to listen to their mother’s musings on the imminent collapse of Indian culture. But he’s also a man of mystery. He has no last name. He has no family, no friends, no history, and no plans for the future.
Translated from the Marathi by acclaimed novelist and critic Jerry Pinto, Sachin Kundalkar’s elegantly wrought and exquisitely spare novel explores the disruption of a traditional family by a free-spirited stranger in order to examine a generation in transition. Intimate, moving, sensual, and wry in its portrait of young love, Cobalt Blue is a frank and lyrical exploration of gay life in India that recalls the work of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst—of people living in emotional isolation, attempting to find long-term intimacy in relationships that until recently were barely conceivable to them
“A mesmerizing novel of heartbreak, memory, and the ease of falling in love set against the impossibility of fully knowing other people.” —Kamila Shamsie, noted author
“One of the most shocking and brilliantly worded stories of love. . . . The story will stick with you, and long after you read it, the novel will play on your mind, forcing you to revisit it from time to time.” ―Buzzfeed
“Cobalt Blue reads like a love song . . . Kundalkar’s writing is masterful in its play of voice, capturing through his characters the claustrophobia of a small town, their longing to escape a middle class existence, and how love, and being in love, has the ability to transform every small detail from the mundane to the magnificent.”—Scroll.in
The Mountains Sing
A Winner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship, a NY Times Editors’ Choice Selection, & a finalist of the Audie 2021 Best Audiobook of the Year
With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War.
Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.
Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness.
“Balances the unrelenting devastation of war with redemptive moments of surprising humanity.” —Booklist
“Lyrical and at once heart-wrenching and hopeful.” —NPR
“Epic in scope, and a celebration of the human spirit, The Mountains Sing is a story you won't soon forget.” —PopSugar
“A poignant and vivid portrayal of a brutal slice of Vietnamese history from a perspective that is so rarely heard abroad: that of the Vietnamese themselves. We are starkly reminded of how those wars—and wars everywhere—wash over and drown both the guilty and innocent alike.” —Baingana
(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace
Rich in detail, this posthumously published diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Vietcong woman doctor gives us fresh insight into the lives of those fighting on the other side of the Vietnam War.
Saved from destruction by an American soldier and then published in Vietnam 35 years later, Trâm’s wartime diaries chronicle the last two years of her life as an idealistic young North Vietnamese battlefield surgeon. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a story of the struggle for one’s ideals amid the despair and grief of war, but most of all, it is a story of hope in the most dire circumstances.
”Urgent, simple prose that pierces the heart.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Remarkable. . . A gift from a heroine who was killed at 27, but whose voice has survived to remind us of the humanity and decency that endure amid—and despite—the horror and chaos of war.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
“Faithfully translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American journalist Pham, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is witness to the tragedy of war, a reminder made more pertinent every day. A book of hope to be read by all.” —The Bloombury Review
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
No Mud, No Lotus
The author, Thích Nhất Hạnh, is one of the most famous Zen Buddhist Masters in the world credited with popularizing “mindfulness” in the West after being exiled from his native Vietnam because of his peace efforts during the war.
No Mud, No Lotus remembers the ancient wisdom that we grow into our own enlightenment out of adversity like the beautiful lotus flowers that only live in the deep muck of muddy swamps—without mud, there is no lotus.
With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Hanh offers practices and inspiration to help us acknowledge our struggles and transform suffering to find true happiness.
“I, like many of you, have endured much suffering during the pandemic. But I am grateful for Hanh’s wisdom. No Mud, No Lotus has provided me so much support—both when it was first published a number of years ago and, more recently, throughout this challenging time.” —Mind Over
“As Thich Nhat Hanh nears the end of his most inspiring life, he has no time left to expound on tangents. This book cuts to the core—fast. With so much wisdom condensed in this small book, this is the most potent and practical guide I have ever read.” —Jack Sherman
“Serene and wise, No Mud, No Lotus is an immensely practical guide to overcoming life’s big and little problems.” —Namrata
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
The Sorrow of War
The daring and controversial novel that took the world by storm—a story of politics, selfhood, survival, and war.
Heart-wrenching, fragmented, raw, former Vietcong soldier Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed everything.
In this novel of North Vietnam, Kien, a lone survivor from the Glorious 27th Youth brigade of the Vietcong, revisits the haunting sites of battles and relives a parade of horrors, as he grapples with his ghosts, his alcoholism and attempts to arrange his life in writing.
Published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, this now classic work has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller.
“Vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam War to take its place alongside the greatest war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. This is to understate its qualities, for, unlike All Quiet, it is about much more than war. A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful, agonizing love story.” —The Independent
“Dramatic . . . Chronicle[s] the wrecked lives of North Vietnamese soldiers who enter the war with blazing idealism, only to sink deeper into disillusionment and pessimism as everything they know falls apart around them.” —The Washington Post
“Powerful . . . A remarkable emotional intensity builds as the author mixes harrowing flashback scenes from the war with images from his pastoral youth, from his heartbreaking homecoming after a decade away, and finally from the nightmare calamity that gives the book its tragic power.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
(A special thank you to book club member, Eydis West for the suggestion.)
The Unwanted
Saigon fell to the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975. Kien Nguyen watched the last U.S. Army helicopter leave without him, without his brother, without his mother, without his grandparents. Left to a nightmarish existence in a violated and decimated country, Kien was more at risk than most because of his odd blond hair and his light eyes—because he was Amerasian.
He was the most unwanted.
Told with stark and poetic brilliance, this is a story of survival and hope, a moving and personal record of a tumultuous and important piece of history. The Unwanted is the only memoir by an Amerasian who stayed behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and who is now living in America.
“A remarkable tale of survival at all costs.” —People
“The son of a wealthy Vietnamese woman and an American businessman, Nguyen was nearly eight when Saigon fell to the Vietcong. For the next decade, he and his family endured hardships brought on by the privileged lives they had previously enjoyed. Nguyen is adept at capturing both the broad sweep of life under the Vietcong and the peculiarities of growing up in a colorful and emotionally dysfunctional family during a jarring and vicious revolution. But perhaps the most engaging aspect of his memoir is its portrayal of the ironies that ensue when the old order collapses and the social hierarchy is turned upside down.” —Publisher’s Weekly
Trigger warning: Rape, sexual violence, & the killing of a dog.
(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)
Wild Mustard
Wild Mustard, an anthology of prizewinning short fiction by contemporary Vietnamese writers, captures the kaleidoscopic experiences of modern Vietnam's youth, navigating between home and newly expanded horizons, as they seek new opportunities through migration, education, and integration not only into their nation but into the world.
Following the tradition of the “Under 40” collections popularized by magazines such as the New Yorker and Granta, but with greater stakes and greater differences between the previous generation of writers and this new one, Wild Mustard seeks to change how North American readers think of Vietnam. Escaping the common fixation on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, these stories reflect the movement and dynamism of the young Vietnamese who find themselves in a vibrant world.
“This beautiful collection of short stories introduces a new side of Vietnam that pulls it out of the historical prison of the Vietnam War, where it’s been trapped for the last forty years. While the stories are specific to Vietnam, they are written in such a way that Anglophone readers of this translation can relate to, which makes them so relevant and important.” —Firpo
“The first anthology to focus on Vietnamese writers born after the Vietnam War, Wild Mustard makes you realize that whatever you thought you knew about Vietnam and its literature is woefully out of date. This is an important collection, one that shows Vietnamese fiction to be not only vibrant and alive, but also a very different creature than what you thought it was.” —Brian Evenson, noted author
(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)
The Secret of Hoa Sen
Winner of the Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is among the most exciting writers to emerge from post-war Vietnam. The Secret of Hoa Sen shines with craft, art, and deeply felt humanity. These penetrating poems, published in bilingual English and Vietnamese, build new bridges between two cultures bound together by war and destruction.
“Born in 1973 in Vietnam’s north but raised in the south’s lush delta, award-winning poet Nguyễn writes precise, vibrant poems that give voice to her country’s present, grounded in tradition and dark history.” —Library Journal
“Nguyễn writes eloquently about family, femaleness and the sensual beauty of her country. When she writes of place, I feel that I am walking past the rice shoots in a long ago world.” —Omaha World-Herald
“Nguyễn's poetic attention is diverse and wide in scope, but never far from her country and family... one cannot help but feel that each poem is written into the Vietnamese landscape of the poet’s imagination. Not carved, but delicately inscribed; so as to preserve the beauty of a country whose wounds must not define it.” —Poetry International
“My Mother’s Rice
Through the eyes of my childhood I watch my mother,
who labored in a kitchen built from straw and mud.
She lifted a pair of chopsticks and twirled sunlight into a pot of boiling rice,
the perfume of a new harvest
soaked her worn shirt as she bent and fed rice straws to the hungry flames.
I wanted to come and help, but the child in me
pulled myself into a dark corner
where I could watch my mother’s face
teach beauty how to glow in hardship,
and how to sing the rice to cook with her sunbaked hands.
That day in our kitchen
I saw how perfection was arranged
by soot-blackened pans and pots,
and by the bend back of my mother, so thin
she would disappear if I wept, or cried out.”
The King is Always above the People
Longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction
An urgent, essential collection of stories about Latin American families, immigration, broken dreams, LA gang members, and other tales of high stakes journeys
Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. Migration. 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.
“Alarcón is an empathic observer of the isolated human, whether isolated by emigration or ambition, blindness or loneliness, poverty or war. His stories have a reporter's mix of kindness and detachment, and his endings land like a punch in the gut. His purpose isn't to approve or condemn, or to liberate. He's writing to show us other people's lives, and in every case, it's a pleasure to be shown.” —NPR
"Showcases his talent as a master storyteller. In 10 vivid, captivating stories, Alarcón explores family relationships, secrets, betrayal, hope, love, heartbreak, immigration, forgiveness, and redemption." —Buzzfeed
“Dynamic novelist and journalist Alarcón delivers a collection of loosely affiliated short stories, each buzzing and alive…Alarcón’s gift for generating real, tangible characters propels readers through his recognizable yet half-real worlds.” —Booklist
All Our Wrong Todays
Winner of le Prix Bob-Morane (a French sci-fi literary award) for best international novel
You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we’d have? Well, it happened. In 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn’t necessary.
Except Tom Barren just can’t seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that’s before his life gets turned upside-down. Blindsided and heartbroken by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.
“Entertainingly mixes thrills and humor.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Belongs in a burgeoning genre of books like Andy Weir’s The Martian that wrap self-deprecating humor around unabashedly nerdy science...Refreshing.” —GQ
“A thrilling tale of time travel and alternate timelines with a refreshingly optimistic view of humanity’s future.” —Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian
“Instantly engaging.…A timeless, if mind-bending, story about the journeys we take, populated by friends, family, lovers, and others, that show us who we might be, could be—and maybe never should be—that eventually leads us to who we are.”—USA Today
“On top of this brilliant philosophical premise of parallel versions of one’s life and the people in it—of what might have been had history unfolded different—Mastai’s language is also rife with an infectious humor you won’t be able to stop reading.”—Harper’s Bazaar
Note: Great on audio too.