Bonsai: A Novel

By Alejandro Zambra and Megan McDowell

“Sublime . . . true and beautiful and moving.” —The New York Times Book Review

The landmark first novel of one of the greatest living Latin American writers—now in a sparkling new translation by his longtime collaborator

When it was first published in 2006, then-literary critic and poet Alejandro Zambra’s first novel, Bonsai, caused a sensation. “It was said,” according to Chile’s newspaper of record, El Mercurio, “that it represented the end of an era, or the beginning of another, in the nation’s letters.” Zambra would go on to become a writer of international renown, winning prizes in Chile and around the world for his funny, tender, sly fictions.
 
Here, in a brilliant new translation from four-time International Booker Prize nominee Megan McDowell, is the little book that started it all: The story of Julio and Emilia, two Chilean university students who, seeking truth in great literature, find one another instead. As they fall together and drift apart over the course of young adulthood, Zambra spins an emotionally engrossing, expertly distilled, formally inventive tale of love, art, and memory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Release date: Aug 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9780525508021

Alejandro Zambra

Alejandro Zambra (Santiago de Chile, 1975) ha publicado, en Anagrama, las novelas Bonsái (2006), La vida privada de los árboles (2007), Formas de volver a casa (2011) y Poeta chileno (2020), el libro de cuentos Mis documentos (2014), las colecciones de ensayos No leer (2018) y Tema libre (2019), y un par de libros bastante más difíciles de clasificar, como el particularísimo Facsímil, que Anagrama recuperó en 2021, y Literatura infantil (2023), una serie de relatos, de ficción y no ficción, sobre infancia y paternidad. Sus novelas han sido traducidas a veinte lenguas, y sus relatos han aparecido en revistas como The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s y McSweeney’s. Ha sido becario de la Biblioteca Pública de Nueva York y ha recibido, entre otras distinciones, el English Pen Award, el O. Henry Prize y el Premio Príncipe Claus. Actualmente vive en la Ciudad de México.

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Cover for Bonsai: A Novel, Author, Alejandro Zambra; Translated by Megan McDowell

Praise for Bonsai

Winner of Chile’s Literary Critics’ Award for Best First Novel

"Lively, often funny, and aphoristic . . . [Bonsai] holds stories within stories."

—James Wood, The New Yorker

Readers who consider Roberto Bolaño the pole star of contemporary Chilean fiction will be jolted by Zambra’s little book. . . . Zambra is indeed the herald of a new wave of Chilean fiction.

—The Nation

A highly original work, full of unforgettable flashes of humor . . . brief as a sigh and forceful as a blow.

—Capital

"[Bonsai] is literature of the best kind, a work of strange maturity whose brevity is one of its greatest virtues—so much is said, and suggested, in so few pages."

—El Mercurio

"A literary creation of the highest order . . . an unclassifiable object of unusual beauty . . . Bonsai is an exquisitely articulated work."

—Las Últimas Noticias

Undeniably fascinating . . . the kind of story that lingers in the mind for weeks after being read.

—The Quarterly Conversation

What is remarkable about Zambra’s novella is the space between ending and beginning—the progressive prose that relates a true story with emotional and artistic implications extending far beyond its eighty-three pages.

—Bookslut

"Bonsai is an appealing miniature, a novella that, despite its brevity, feels airy and full . . . an enjoyable, pleasantly surprising, and clever read."

—The Complete Review

"It is often said of a book that it is worth reading; rarely, as in [Bonsai’s] case, will a book be enjoyed even more in its rereading."

—ABC España

Praise for Alejandro Zambra

Zambra’s books have long shown him to be a writer who, at the sentence level, is in a world all his own. His exacting eye, his crack comic timing, his ability to describe just enough to keep the reader interested; these traits do much to demonstrate his staying power as an architect of larger stories.

—NPR

[Zambra’s novels] are written with startling talent.

—The New York Times Book Review

One of the most interesting writers working right now.

—Elle

Zambra’s sentences comically dance around narrative convention without disrupting the immersive pull of the story . . . and the effect is spellbinding. . . . His fiction is, quite simply, some of the best being produced today.

—The Rumpus

"If you are going to read Zambra, which you should, don’t just read My Documents: read everything he’s done."

—The Guardian

Zambra is the author of small classics—short in length, but enormous in every other way.

—Valeria Luiselli, author of Lost Children Archive

Zambra is so alert to the intimate beauty and mystery of being alive that in his hands a raindrop would feel as wide as a world.

—Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno

There is no writer like Alejandro Zambra, no one as bold, as subtle, as funny.

—Daniel Alarcón, author of The KingIs Always Above the People

Zambra is the defining light of today’s Latin American literature—an author whose cult is about to take over, the one we’ll all be congratulating ourselves on having known about in the early days, before his deceptively slender masterpieces lay on every American reader’s night table.

—John Wray, author of Godsend

I read all of Alejandro Zambra’s novels back-to-back because they were such good company. His books are like a phone call in the middle of the night from an old friend, and afterward, I missed the charming and funny voice on the other end, with its strange and beautiful stories.

—Nicole Krauss, author of To Be a Man

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BONSAI

Alejandro Zambra was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1975. He is the author of Chilean Poet, Multiple Choice, Not to Read, My Documents, Ways of Going Home, and The Private Lives of Trees. In Chile, among other honors, he has won the National Book Council Award for best novel three times. In English, he has won the English PEN Award and the PEN/O. Henry Prize and was a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He has also won the Prince Claus Award (Holland) and received a Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his stories have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, and Harper’s Magazine, among other publications. He has taught creative writing and Hispanic literature for fifteen years and currently lives

Reviews for Bonsai

[vive_livre · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A novella with an almost dreamlike mood. Form is foregrounded over story and given the brevity, there just isn't enough time to develop psychologically rich characterizations. It has good moments where it evokes teenage love and getting lost in literature and sexuality. It is also a self-reflexive book, commenting on itself in often playful ways.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The perfect title for a compact story. This novella tells the stories of Julio and Emilia, who dated for some time and then went their separate ways. Zambra manages to tell what could have been a 300-page novel in just 79 pages, by trimming it down to essential episodes, and by introducing a few other people to give details from another perspective.

Very interesting, though the sparseness makes it more interesting, because it is also all here. I look forward to reading more of his work.

[berthirsch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first discovered Alejandro Zambra back in 2013 when his short story, Thank You, appeared in the online magazine Vice. A breezy, jazzy, gritty tale of a taxicab ride from hell that takes place in Mexico City. After reading I hungered for more.

Since I have read Chilean Poet and My Documents and now Bonsai. I now consider Zambra as one the more entertaining novelists around.

His novella, Bonsai, fits the bill. Short, fast moving, its title a metaphor for relationships: delicate plants that require care and an artistic touch to survive. The tale involves two teenage lovers, Julio and Emilia, who enjoy sex yet lie to one another - both claiming they had read Proust's, In Search of Lost Time.

Avid readers they read to one another as foreplay searching the texts for titillating passages. Yet when they read a story, Tantalia, by Macedonio Fernandez, their "love was doomed."

Emilia's best friend and roommate complains about Julio, that he is changing her. Emilia's quick response: "would you want to be with someone if they didn't change your life?"

This is a fast-moving tale, easily digested in one fulfilling sitting.

I recommend all of Zimbra's work; funny, bright, literate, charming, etc.

[b.masonjudy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What I enjoyed about Bonsai was ability to encapsulate a period of time between two people but in a way that was concise, tactile and thoughtful without slipping into being too whimsical. The self-aware prose doesn't try to do anything lofty, it is quite blunt about aspects of the traditional narrative, and it's self-contained, just like a bonsai. A fun novella and the Melville edition is sexy as all get out.

[wildrequiem · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"In Bonsai almost nothing happens, the plot could be told in two paragraphs, a story that perhaps is not good."

How does one even describe this book... it's meta. It's self-reflexive. It's more modern art than lit. It reads like literary experimentation. Somehow, it's about nothing, yet at the same time, it's about everything.

It's experimental film quality stuff.

I need to come back to this later.

[benjaminsiegel-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a joke, right? Short story Sokol Experiment?

[paulberauer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Bonsai" follows two university students Julio and Emilia, two lovers who it is revealed will eventually separate and whose end is hinted at the very beginning of the story. Not only is the plot fantastic, but the style is what really brings everything together. The story is told in third person, and is often seem indifferent, as if the story was unimportant, the story unimportant, the characters fate, trivial. The conversations of the characters are interspersed with quotes from their favorite authors and the texts in subdivided into various brief sections, keeping things divided and moving the reader along. Overall, a great book and worth every penny.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novella, by the Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, is his first novel after he published two books of poems, Useless Bay and Change. Bonsai won the Chilean Critics' Award for the Best Novel of the Year in 2006, and it is one of the 10 shortlisted books for the Best Translated Book of 2008 by Three Percent.

The main characters are two Chilean university students, Emilia and Julio, who become lovers after a drunken study session. They are inseparable, almost indistinguishable in their likes and dislikes, and their lovemaking sessions are preceded by excerpts from their favorite works of literature. Eventually they begin to drift apart, and Emilia soon disappears from Chile.

Anita, Emilia's old roommate and best friend since childhood, eventually tracks her down years later in Madrid, and makes a startling and disturbing discovery, which is hinted at in the opening paragraph of the book.

Emilia and Julio are lovingly painted, and even though you know what will eventually happen to Julia, it is still shocking and achingly sad, and the ending is heartbreaking.