LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE
The breakout book from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker's 20 best writers under 40: a breathtaking, suspenseful search for the truth of one man's spectacular downfall.
Nelson's life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country and moved to the United States, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can't seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, with legendary guerrilla theatre troupe Diciembre. And that's when the real trouble begins.
The tour takes Nelson across a landscape scarred by years of civil war. Forging bonds with his fellow actors, he becomes hopelessly entangled in their lives, until a long-buried betrayal erupts into chaos.
Nelson's fate is slowly revealed through the investigation of the narrator, a young man obsessed with Nelson's story—and perhaps closer to it than he lets on. In sharp, vivid, and beautiful prose, Alarcón delivers a compulsively readable narrative and a provocative meditation on fate, identity, and the large consequences that can result from even our smallest choices.