Alejandro Zambra

Alejandro Zambra (* 1975 in Santiago de Chile) is a Chilean novelist, poet and literary critic. His acclaimed debut novel Bonsái has been awarded the 2006 Chilean Critics Award.

Life and work

Alejandro Zambra was born in 1975 in Santiago de Chile. After completing a philology student, he received his doctorate in Spanish literature at the Universidad Católica. Today he teaches at the Diego Portales University in Santiago de Chile. Zambra regularly writes literary critical contributions to various newspapers, including Las Últimas Noticias, El Mercurio, Le Tercera, The Clinic and El País.

His biggest success came Zambra with his debut novel Bonsái, which has been translated into several languages ​​and filmed by Christian Jiménez. This was followed by los árboles (2007) and Formas de volver a casa la vida privada de novels (2011, The Invention of Childhood, Suhrkamp, 2012). In addition Zambra published the two volumes of poetry Bahía inútil (1998) and Mudanza (2003) and the essay collections No empty ( 2010) and No empty recopilacion de Críticas ( 2011).

In his novels, Zambra is dealing with the growth in the Pinochet dictatorship. In an interview, he called the literature of his generation, a " children's literature " because he and his peers had grown up with the idea that the novel is one of the " fathers of the literature " and history of some of the ancestors is pre-given. "It took a long time until we have understood that we have our own history and can say something about it."

For his literary work Zambra has received numerous prizes and awards. Among the Premio del Consejo Nacional del Libro de Chile 2006 Bonsái and the Premio Altazor 2012 for Formas de volver a casa. 2010 magazine called him Granta one of the most important 22 Spanish-speaking contemporary writers under 35.

Works

  • Bonsai. Novel. Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona 2006.
  • La vida privada de los árboles. Novel. Editorial Anagrama, 2007.
  • Bahía inútil. Novel. Ediciones Stratis, 2008.
  • Mudanza. El Quid Ediciones, Almería, 2003; Ediciones Tacitas, 2 008
  • No empty. Essays. Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, 2010.
  • Formas de volver a casa. Novel. Editorial Anagrama, 2011 German: The invention of the childhood. From the Spanish by Susanne Lange, Suhr Kamp Verlag, Berlin, 2 012, ISBN 978-3-518-42334-9.
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