Bonsai

Alejandro Zambra is the author of Multiple Choice; My Documents, a finalist for the Frank O Connor International Short Story Award; and three other works of fiction: Chilean Poet, Ways of Going Home, and The Private Lives of Trees. The recipient of numerous literary prizes in Chile and around the world, as well as a Cullman Center Fellowship, he has had stories published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Harper s, among others. He lives in Mexico City. Megan McDowell (translator) is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards, and has been short- or long-listed three times for the Booker International prize.

Winner of Chile s Literary Critics Award for Best Novel

Lively, often funny and aphoristic . . . [Bonsai] holds stories within stories. James Wood, The New Yorker
 
Readers who consider Roberto Bolaño the pole star of contemporary Chilean fiction will be jolted by Zambra's little book . . . Zambra is indeed the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction. The Nation
 
A subtle, eerie, ultimately wrenching account of failed young love . . . A total knockout.   Junot Díaz, The New York Times Book Review

Bonsai has been praised the world over . . . this is the perfect time to discover (or re-discover) it. Not a single word is wasted in this powerful, elegantly told story. LitHub

A highly original work, full of unforgettable sparks of humor . . . brief as a sigh and forceful as a blow. El Capital
 
A literary creation of the highest order . . . Bonsai is an exquisitely articulated work . . . an unclassifiable object of unusual beauty . . . one of the two or three best Chilean novels of recent times. Las Últimas Noticias
 
[U]ndeniably fascinating . . . the kind of story that lingers in the mind for weeks after being read.   The Quarterly Conversation

What is remarkable about Zambra s novella is the space between ending and beginning the progressive prose that relates a true story with emotional and artistic implications extending far beyond its concise pages.   Bookslut

Bonsai is an appealing miniature, a novella that, despite its brevity, feels airy and full an enjoyable, pleasantly surprising, and clever read.   The Complete Review

It is often said of a book that it is worth reading; rarely, as in [Bonsai s] case, will it be enjoyed even more in its rereading. ABC España
 
[Bonsai] is literature of the best kind, a work of strange maturity that makes brevity one of its greatest virtues, due to how much can be said and above all suggested in so few pages. El Mercurio