You Glow in the Dark Paperback – February 6, 2024 by Liliana Colanzi (Author), Chris Andrews (Translator)
$14.95

You Glow in the Dark

Brand: New Directions
Current Stock: 1
UPC: 9780811237185
Gift Wrapping: Gift Wrapping Available
Authors: Liliana Colanzi (Author), Chris Andrews (Translator)
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ New Directions (February 6, 2024)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 144 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0811237184
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0811237185

Introducing the Bolivian writer Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark glimmers with an unearthly light and a nearly radioactive power

The seven stories of You Glow in the Dark unfold in a Latin America wrecked and poisoned by human greed, and yet Colanzi’s writing―at once sleek and dense, otherworldly and intensely specific―casts an eerily bright spell over the wreckage. Some stories seem to be set in a near future; all are superbly executed and yet hard to pin down; they often leave the reader wondering: was that realistic or fantastic? Colanzi draws power from Andean cyberpunk just as much as from classic horror writers, and this daring is matched by her energizing simultaneous use of multiplicity and fragmentation―the book's stylistic trademarks. Freely mixing worlds, she uses the Bolivian altiplano as the backdrop for an urban dystopia and blends Aymara with Spanish. Colanzi never gets bogged down; she can be brutal and direct or light-handed and subtle. Her materials are dark, but always there’s the lift of her vivid sense of humor. You Glow in the Dark seizes the reader's attention (from the title on) and holds it: this is a book that announces the arrival of a major new talent.

Review

"Liliana Colanzi won the International Ribera Del Duero Prize for You Glow in the Dark, further evincing the tremendous talent of this Bolivian writer whose fiction has opened up new spaces in our literature of the strange and the fantastic."
― Latin American Literature Today

"Perhaps the best thing about the collection are the coincidences that thread through it . . . the luminosity of the book resides in these encounters and synchronicities, like the blue light that shines from the contaminated people in the last story, the blue of death, but also of a star or the bottom of the ocean."
― Rosamaría Durán, Otra Parte

"A rare excellence: a capacity to combine the ambiguity of poetry with the clarity of a revelation. "
― Carlos Pardo, El País

"Tinged with futuristic flourishes and set largely in the Bolivian Altiplano, these stories examine the aftermath of terrible trespasses, mostly only whispered about. The 'alien gaze' is a keen instrument for dissecting the human condition, and Colanzi employs it to great effect here."
― Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"This slim story collection contains seven entries, each told in taut, sharp prose that will beguile, enthrall, and astound. … In 2017, Colanzi was named one of the 39 most promising Latin American writers under 39, and her talent and stature continue to grow."
― Diego Báez, Booklist

About the Author

Liliana Colanzi was born in Santa Cruz in Bolivia and has published three collections of short stories. She teaches Latin American literature at Cornell University. Colanzi is the founder of Dum Dum publishing house in Bolivia, an indie press focusing on fiction that mixes genres and “has a foot in the jungle and another one on Mars.” She won the 2015 Aura Estrada Prize, awarded to women writers under 35 who live in the USA, Canada, or Latin America, and who write in Spanish, and You Glow in the Dark (Ustedes brillan en lo oscuro) won the prestigious Ribera Del Duero Prize 2022.

The poet and translator Chris Andrews has won the Valle Inclan Prize and the French-American Translation Prize for his work.