by Gabriela Alemán, Dick Cluster (Translator), Mary Ellen Fieweger (Translator)
Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected—and often highly compromised—forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In this collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, she teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of national identity. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador’s place on the world stage.
From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe’s map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the Galapagos Archipelago, to a night with the husband of Ecuador’s most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbit, this series of cracked “family portraits” provides a cast of picaresque heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what’s happened: they’ve learned a great deal about a country whose more well known exports—soccer, coffee and cocoa—mask an intriguing national story that’s ripe for the telling.
Family Album: Stories
Gabriela Alemán was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She received a PhD at Tulane University and holds a Master's degree in Latin American Literature from Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar. She currently resides in Quito, Ecuador. Her literary honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006; member of Bogotá 39, a 2007 selection of the most important up-and-coming writers in Latin America in the post-Boom generation; one of five finalists for the 2015 Premio Hispanoamericano de Cuento Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) for her short story collection La muerte silba un blues; and winner of several prizes for critical essays on literature and film. Her novel Poso Wells was published in English translation by City Lights in 2018.
Dick Cluster has translated four books for City Lights including In the Cold of the Malecón and Other Stories (2000) by Antonio José Ponte, Frigid Tales (2002) by Pedro de Jesus, A Corner of the World (2014) by Mylene Fernández-Pintado, and Poso Wells (2018) by Gabriela Alemán. His own novels include Return to Sender (1988), Repulse Monkey (1989), and Obligations of the Bone (1992). Cluster lives in Oakland, California.
Mary Ellen Fieweger has translated a number of books, including Wolves' Dream by Abdón Ubidia, Clio's Laws: On History and Language by Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, and two anthologies of short stories by Ecuadorian writers: Ten Stories from Ecuador/Diez cuentistas ecuatorianos and Contemporary Ecuadorian Short Stories. Her own works include Es un monstruo grande y pisa fuerte: la minería en el Ecuador y el mundo and A History of Ecuador/Una historia del Ecuador. Fieweger lives in Ecuador.ISBN: 9780872868823
Publisher: City Lights Books
Binding: Paperback
Pub Date: May 17, 2022Pages: 120
-Short stories -Ecuador
-Alemaan Salvador, Maraia Gabriela