Alejandro Zambra

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Alejandro Zambra at the National Book Festival 2015

Alejandro Zambra (* 1975 in Santiago de Chile ) is a Chilean novelist , poet and literary critic . His much-acclaimed debut novel Bonsái was awarded the Chilean Critics' Prize in 2006.

life and work

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

Zambra achieved his greatest success so far with his debut novel Bonsái, which has been translated into various languages ​​and filmed by Christian Jiménez. This was followed by the novels La vida privada de los árboles (2007) and Formas de volver a casa (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 leer (2010) and No leer, recopilacion de criticas (2011).

In his novels, Zambra deals with growing up in the Pinochet dictatorship. In an interview, he called the literature of his generation “children's literature” because he and his peers grew up with the idea that the novel belongs to the “fathers of literature” and that history is something given by the ancestors. "It took us a long time to understand that we have our own story and that we can say something about it."

Zambra has received numerous prizes and awards for his literary work. Including the Premio del Consejo Nacional del Libro de Chile 2006 for Bonsái and the Premio Altazor 2012 for Formas de volver a casa. In 2010, Granta magazine named him one of the 22 most important contemporary Spanish-speaking authors under 35 years of age.

Works (selection)

  • Bonsai . Novel. Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona 2006.
    • Bonsai Roman. Translated from the Spanish by Susanne Lange. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2015.
  • La vida privada de los arboles . Novel. Editorial Anagrama, 2007.
  • Bahía Inútil . Novel. Ediciones Stratis, 2008.
  • Mudanza . El Quid Ediciones, Almería, 2003; Ediciones Tácitas, 2008.
  • No empty . Essays. Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, 2010.
  • Formas de volver a casa . Novel. Editorial Anagrama, 2011, German: The Invention of Childhood . Translated from the Spanish by Susanne Lange , Suhrkamp Verlag , Berlin , 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-42334-9 .
  • Mis documentos , short stories. Anagrama, Barcelona 2013.

Secondary literature

  • Manuel Clemens: The invention of the protagonist. Alejenadro Zambra subverts the anti-education novel with "Formas de volver a casa" , in: Weimarer Contributions , Heft 4 (2015), pp. 502-517.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.themillions.com/2011/03/the-millions-interview-alejandro-zambra.html
  2. ↑ http://elpais.com/diario/2010/10/02/cultura/1285970401_850215.html
  3. ↑ Great literature in mini format , review by Katharina Döbler in Deutschlandradio Kultur on March 11, 2015
  4. ↑ Love in times of transition , review by Eva-Christina Meier in the daily newspaper from June 20, 2015
  5. ^ Katharina Döbler, Ein stilles Buch , in: deutschlandradiokultur.de , September 11, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Zambra, Alejandro
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chilean writer, poet and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH 1975
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Chile