Gabriela Alemán book launch
Event Start Date: October 28, 2022 2:00 PM
Event End Date: October 28, 2022 3:30 PM
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Gabriela Alemán book launch with Nicolás Campisi
28 October 2022
2:00 pm | Judaica Suite, Smathers Library
Family Album is Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán’s rollicking follow-up to her acclaimed English-language debut, Poso Wells.
Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected–and often highly compromised–forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In this collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, she teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of national identity. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador’s place on the world stage. From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe’s map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the Galápagos Archipelago, to a night with the husband of Ecuador’s most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbitt, this series of cracked “family portraits” provides a cast of picaresque heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what’s happened: they’ve learned a great deal about a country whose more well known exports–soccer, coffee and cocoa–mask an intriguing national story that’s ripe for the telling.
Gabriela Alemán will be interviewed by Nicolás Campisi (Georgetown University).