Is Alejandro Zambra a Genius—Or a Gimmick Artist?
A new translation of the Chilean writer’s debut novel raises the question: Does he live up to the hype?
This article is adapted from AQ’s special report on millennials in politics With his 2006 prose debut Bonsai, Alejandro Zambra was instantly named a writer to watch in his native Chile, a literary representative of the first generation to come of age under democracy. Eighteen years and many accolades later, his early experiment in radical concision—ten thousand words, sold as a novel—has been released in a new translation. Its subject is suitably youthful. We meet Julio and Emilia in high school, at the beginning of a torrid romance sustained by a shared enthusiasm for...
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