“Kafka in a Skirt: Stories from the Wall” – by Daniel Chacón

Daniel Chacón begins his latest collection of short stories with a metafictional device. He tells us how to read the book. We can read the stories in order or skip around, following themes. The device is borrowed from Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (translated as Hopscotch), a masterpiece in 155 chapters, the final 99 of which can…

Twelve New Books with Social Justice Themes

1. Decolonization: A Short History by Jan C. Jansen and Jürgen Osterhammel (Princeton University Press) Decolonization examines the consequences of European, Japanese and American decolonization from World War I to the 1990s. It details the dramatic collapses of long-established imperial regimes, some in peace, others in a torrent of blood, and describes the long shadow cast…

The King and Queen of Comezón by Denise Chavez

What a carnal novel this is. Three hundred pages of bodily functions and dysfunctions. A book full of seepages and oozings and assorted excretions: the housemaid farting in the bath, characters urinating on themselves, an undocumented border crosser having her period at just the wrong moment, the untold joys of defecation, projectile vomiting in a…

“Damnificados” to be published, Sept 2015

Good news. My novel, Damnificados, will be published by PM Press in September 2015. The novel is based on the true story of the Tower of David in Caracas, Venezuela. This structure stood in the heart of the city, unfinished and empty. Its owner, David Brillembourg, a millionaire businessman, died before it was completed, and…