Granta editor John Freeman interviews the author about book piracy in Peru – the subject of Daniel Alarcón’s piece in Granta 109: Work.
Photograph © Claudia Alva
‘Granta editor John Freeman interviews Daniel Alarcón about book piracy in Peru.’
Granta editor John Freeman interviews the author about book piracy in Peru – the subject of Daniel Alarcón’s piece in Granta 109: Work.
Photograph © Claudia Alva
‘She must have loved gold seeing that everything in the penthouse was gold. We didn’t sit. Fear didn’t let us see where to sit.’ A story by Adachioma Ezeano.
‘I had also, a week earlier, been fired for trying to sleep with my boss’s husband. I got the idea from a book, or maybe every book.’ A story by Emily Adrian.
‘The Mitsubishi conglomerate controls a forty per cent share of the world market in bluefin tuna; they are freezing and hoarding huge stocks of the fish every year.’ Katherine Rundell on extinction speculation.
‘Two roof tiles are missing to the rear: the kiss of death. Without repair, ruination is now inevitable. Until then, this is my best hope of shelter.’ Cal Flyn visits the island of Swona in northern Scotland.
‘I’m on the cliff of myself & these aren’t wings, they’re futures. / For as long as I can remember my body was a small town nightmare.’ A poem by Ocean Vuong.
Daniel Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru in 1977 and raised in the southern United States. He is associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, a monthly magazine based in Lima. His novels include Lost City Radio and At Night We Walk in Circles, and his story collection, War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. He currently lives in Oakland, California, where he is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Mills College.
More about the author →John Freeman is the founder of the literary annual Freeman's and an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He is also the author and editor of eleven books, including Dictionary of the Undoing; There's a Revolution Outside, My Love (co-edited with Tracy K Smith), and Wind, Trees, a new collection of poems. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and been translated into more than twenty languages. Once a month he hosts The California Book Club, an online discussion of a classic book of golden state literature for Alta magazine. He lives in New York City.
More about the author →‘Being pirated is the Peruvian equivalent of making the bestseller list.’
‘With few exceptions, presidents do not comment on or even recognize an individual loss like this one; they operate on another scale, and there is no room within their discourse for something so small.’
‘It’s about the music of it. “It’s Hollywood,” Mario said, and assured me the same is true of political speech-making.’
‘The strangest parts of a story are not necessarily the fictional elements.’
‘Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don’t believe there’s a poem in anything any more, maybe I’ll write a story.’
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