Winner of the O. Henry Prize for the story "The Mad People of Paris"
These revelatory short stories tread the line between surrealism and
realism with strange, appealing characters who take on a sacrifice in
spite of themselves.
A followup to his first novel, The Night (winner of the Rive Gauche à
Paris Prize for foreign books in 2016), this collection of short stories
by Venezuelan literary star Rodrigo Blanco Calderón features a
taxidermist painter, a blind man lost in Mexico City, a female
motorcyclist who rides naked through the night, a foreigner who learns a
language making confessions in Paris churches, and a dying pilot who
finds peace in a reading of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Impeccable and masterful in his storytelling, Blanco Calderón constructs
a nocturnal cast of characters who become the victims and executioners
of a sacrifice in the midst of a floundering Venezuela, others with the
threat of terrorism in France, or in a Mexico symbolizing the first
shots of the revolution.