
Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra
From the author of My Documents and Chilean Poet, a wise, humorous, and captivating literary exploration of the delights and absurdities of childhood, fatherhood, and family life
Childish Literature is a charming and wide-ranging collection of short stories, essays, and even a couple of poems produced under the influence of fatherhood, a transformative experience that reshapes and enlivens the author's relationship to aging, intimacy, and time. Written in Alejandro Zambra’s brilliantly warm, playful, and philosophical voice, these pieces explore the lives of families and their stories through a wide variety of topics—from screen time and "soccer sadness" to personal libraries, fishing, and psychedelics. Throughout, Zambra captures the texture of daily life and deep truths about how we feel and live, with particular insight into the ways parents and children challenge, enrich, and entertain each other.
Simultaneously lighthearted and profound, and brilliantly rendered by National Book Award-winning translator Megan McDowell, Childish Literature is an intimate and unclassifiable new work by an internationally celebrated writer.
REVIEWS
“The bouncy castle to the hard park bench of so many motherhood memoirs. . . [Zambra] is funny, filling his various experiments with deadpan jokes and self-deprecation and scenes that play up the still lowered expectations of a father with a young child.” —The New Republic
“One of Latin America’s most inventive prose writers . . . whatever the future of the fatherhood book, Childish Literature is a welcome addition to this fledgeling genre.” —The Spectator
“Pulling together a mixture of Zambra’s contained fictions and his astute prose essays, Childish Literature is an ode not just to childhood, but to having a child… Zambra declares that 'all books can be read in function of the desire to belong.' Perhaps the greatest accolade of this book is how immediately and convincingly this desire is achieved on the part of the reader… Childish Literature is an open house. It is open to all and points us towards our own personal sense of childish belonging.” —Cleveland Review of Books
PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
ISBN: 978-0143138082
Pages: 224