{"title":"Mauro Javier Cardenas","description":"Mauro Javier Cárdenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. He's the author of Aphasia (FSG, 2020) and The Revolutionaries Try Again (Coffee House Press, 2016). In 2016 he received a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and in 2017 the Hay Festival included him in Bogota 39, a selection of the best young Latin American novelists.","products":[{"product_id":"american-abductions-paperback","title":"American Abductions - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTorrential and dreamlike, Mauro Javier Cárdenas' novel unfurls into a layered, poignant, and unflinching portrait of how family separations have impacted the minds of Latin American deportees in a technology-bound 21st century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmerican Abductions\u003c\/i\u003e opens in a near-future United States whose omnipresence of data-harvesting and algorithms has enabled the mass incarceration and deportation of Latin Americans--regardless of citizenship. After their father is abducted by immigration officials before their eyes and deported to Colombia, Ada and her sister Eva are left to contend with a United States as all-seeing as it is hostile. Now adults, Ada remains in San Francisco while Eva has joined their father in Colombia, tending him in his ailing health. When his condition worsens, Eva asks Ada to come see them: a nearly impossible feat, given the United States' restrictions on Latin Americans' movements. Ada, terribly alone, must come to terms with the violence of American society and the grief of lost community. Exploring the role of technology, mass society, and American expectations on how Latin American deportees should tell their stories, the novel delves into the ties, memories, and lines of code binding communities together.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eMauro Javier Cárdenas has been lauded as one of the most promising Latin American authors, and in \u003ci\u003eAmerican Abductions\u003c\/i\u003e, his deconstruction of American society and the surveillance state proves his generation-defining acuity and storytelling. The book's polyphony of mysticism, technology, and philosophy calls to mind the perceptive dystopian visions of Philip K. Dick and the visionary stylistic fluidity of Samuel Delany. The result is a sharp and metaphysical narrative, a masterwork examining the place of Latin Americans in a United States that is always changing.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50104771543263,"sku":"9781628975185","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/LXWcXYZuX79781628975185.webp?v=1781111284"},{"product_id":"aphasia-paperback","title":"Aphasia - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eMauro Javier C rdenas, the critically acclaimed author of \u003ci\u003eThe Revolutionaries Try Again\u003c\/i\u003e--\"an original, insubordinate novel\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e)--pens a profound story of literature about a man coming to terms with his dysfunctional Colombian family, as well as his own behavior, as an immigrant in America\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAntonio wants to avoid thinking about his sister, even though he knows he won't be able to avoid thinking about his sister, because his sister is on the run after allegedly threatening to shoot her neighbors, and has been claiming that Antonio, Obama, the Pentagon, and their mother are all conspiring against her. Nevertheless, Antonio is going to try his best to be as avoidant as possible, because he worries that what's been happening to his sister might infect his relatively contented, ordered Los Angeles life and destabilize the precarious arrangement with his ex-wife that's allowed him to stay close to his two daughters. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn fact, he's busy doing everything except facing his problems head-on: transcribing recordings of his mother speaking about their troubled life in Colombia; transcribing recordings of his ex-wife speaking about her idyllic life in Czechia; writing about former girlfriends whose words and deeds recur in his mind; rereading stories by American writers that allow him to skirt the subject of his sister's state of mind without completely destroying his own. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWritten in long, unraveling sentences that accommodate all the detritus of thought--scenes real and imagined, headphones and heartache, Toblerones and Thomas Bernhard--\u003ci\u003eAphasia\u003c\/i\u003e captures the immensity of the present moment as well as the pain of the past. It cements Mauro Javier C rdenas's place as one of the most innovative and extraordinary novelists working today.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50104899600607,"sku":"9781250800336","price":18.36,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/VVZXb0NjSk5wdERBS3V5N2xyK1hoQT09.webp?v=1781112090"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/mauro-javier-cardenas.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}