Chilean Poet: A Novel

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” “A tender and funny story about love, family and the peculiar position of being a stepparent…[Chilean Poet]broadens the author’s scope and quite likely his international reputation.” —Los Angeles Times “Zambra [is] one of the most brilliant Latin American writers of his generation.” —The New York Review of Books “Zambra' books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own.” —Juan Vidal, NPR.org A writer of “startling talent” (The New York Times Book Review), Alejandro Zambra returns with his most substantial work yet: a story of fathers and sons, ambition and failure, and what it means to make a family After a chance encounter at a Santiago nightclub, aspiring poet Gonzalo reunites with his first love, Carla.

Though their desire for each other is still intact, much has changed: among other things, Carla now has a six- year-old son, Vicente.

Soon the three form a happy sort-of family— a stepfamily, though no such word exists in their language.