Bücher von Daniel Alarcon

The world's best contemporary writers-from Michael Chabon and Claire Messud to Jonathan Lethem and Amy Tan-engage in a wide-ranging, insightful, and oft- surprising roundtable discussion on the art of writing fictionDrawing back the curtain on the mysterious process of writing novels, The Secret Miracle brings together the foremost practitioners of the craft to discuss how they write. Paul Auster, Roddy Doyle, Allegra Goodman, Aleksandar Hemon, Mario Vargas Llosa, Susan Minot, Rick Moody, Haruki Murakami, George Pelecanos, Gary Shteyngart, Daniel Alarcón, and others take us step by step through the alchemy of writing fiction, answering everything from nuts-and-bolts queries-"Do you outline?"-to perennial questions posed by writers and readers alike: "What makes a character compelling?" From Stephen King's deadpan distinction between novels and short stories ("Novels are longer and have more s**t in them") to Colm Toibin's anti-romanticized take on his characters ("They are just words") to José Manuel Prieto's mature perspective on the anxieties of influence ("Influences are felt or weigh you down more when young"), every page contains insights found nowhere else.With honesty, humor, and elegance, The Secret Miracle gives both aspiring writers and lovers of literature a master class in the art of writing.

"[Alarcón's] tales, set largely in the hardscrabble world of Lima, build with all the power of a Flannery O'Connor story: a gentle enough start, an innocent setting, and before long the reader is adrift in a drama that defies the imagination--with characters that live long after the book is closed." -- Washington Post Book World In this exquisite story collection, Daniel Alarcón moves from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people to illuminate wars, both national and internal, waged in jungles, across the borders, in the streets of Lima, and in the intimacy of New York apartments. He tells of lives at the margins: an unrepentant terrorist remembers where it all began, a would-be emigrant contemplates the ramifications of leaving and never coming back, a reporter turns in his pad and pencil for the inglorious costume of a street clown. War by Candlelight is a devastating portrait of a world in flux from an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.

LONGLISTED for the 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTIONAn urgent, essential collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other tales of high stakes journeys, from the award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We Walk in Circles. Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In Daniel Alarcón's hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes. In "The Thousands," people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in "The Bridge." A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in "The Ballad of Rocky Rontal." And in the tour de force novella, "The Auroras", a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman. Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.