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Bonsai

By Alejandro Zambra
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Check link for latest rating. ( 17,323 ratings, 2,286 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra explores a delicate relationship between two young lovers, Julio and Emilia, who bond over literature and create a world of their own. As the story unfolds, their romance is reflected through the lens of art, memory, and time, leading to an exploration of truth and fiction. The novella is both a meditation on love and an examination of how small details can shape and define relationships.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This book may appeal to you if you enjoy intimate and introspective narratives that explore love, loss, and the passage of time. The author artfully crafts a compact yet powerful story that delves into the complexities of human relationships, ideal for readers who appreciate a poetic and thought-provoking approach to storytelling.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Available in a beautifully rendered new translation, Alejandro Zambra's brilliantly distilled first novel is a formally innovative, metafictional tale of love, art and memory.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Bonsai is the story of Julio and Emilia, two young Chilean students who, seeking truth in great literature, find each other instead. Like all young couples, they lie to each other, revise themselves, and try new identities on for size, observing and analysing their love story as if it's one of the great novels they both pretend to have read.

As they shadow each other throughout their young adulthoods, falling together and drifting apart, Zambra spins a formally innovative, metafictional tale that brilliantly explores the relationship among love, art, and memory.

'The last truly great book I read has to be Alejandro Zambra's Bonsai. A subtle, eerie, ultimately wrenching account of failed young love in Chile ... A total knockout.' - Junot Díaz

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Alejandro Zambra's Bonsai receives high praise for its subtle and powerful narrative, exploring themes of young love and literature in Chile. Critics appreciate its striking originality, with James Wood noting the novella's unique qualities. Rivka Galchen and Valeria Luiselli commend Zambra's revelatory and impactful storytelling. It's described as a "total knockout" by Junot Díaz and leaves readers with a lingering melancholic beauty, according to the New York Times. The novella is celebrated for its elegance and profound emotional impact.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781913097998

Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 17 August 2022

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Fitzcarraldo Editions

Contributors:

  • Translated by Megan McDowell
  • Translated by Megan McDowell

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 125.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 250g

Pages: 76

Collections

Alejandro Zambra Fiction General Fiction Literary Fiction Romance

About the Author

Alejandro Zambra is the author of the poetry collections Bahia inutil and Mudanza, the novels Bonsai, which won the Critics Prize and the National Council Prize for Books for the best novel of the year, La vida privada de los arboles (The Private Lives of Trees) and the book of essays No leer (2010). Ways of Going Home was the winner of the Altazor Prize and the Consejo Nacional del Libro Prize, both for the best 2011 Chilean novel. He lives in Santiago and is a literature professor at the University Diego Portales.

Megan McDowell is an award-winning Spanish-language translator. She has translated books by Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enriquez and Lina Meruane, among others, and her short story translations have appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, Harper's and The White Review. She lives in Santiago, Chile.

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