You Glow in the Dark
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Introducing the Bolivian writer Liliana Colanzi, You Glow in the Dark glimmers with an unearthly light and a nearly radioactive power
The seven stories of You Glow in the Dark unfold in a Latin America wrecked and poisoned by human greed, and yet Colanzi’s writing—at once sleek and dense, otherworldly and intensely specific—casts an eerily bright spell over the wreckage. Some stories seem to be set in a near future; all are superbly executed and yet hard to pin down; they often leave the reader wondering: was that realistic or fantastic? Colanzi draws power from Andean cyberpunk just as much as from classic horror writers, and this daring is matched by her energizing simultaneous use of multiplicity and fragmentation—the book's stylistic trademarks. Freely mixing worlds, she uses the Bolivian altiplano as the backdrop for an urban dystopia and blends Aymara with Spanish. Colanzi never gets bogged down; she can be brutal and direct or light-handed and subtle. Her materials are dark, but always there’s the lift of her vivid sense of humor. You Glow in the Dark seizes the reader's attention (from the title on) and holds it: this is a book that announces the arrival of a major new talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bolivian writer Colanzi makes her English-language debut with a shimmering collection focused on the ruinous consequences of human folly. Some stories portray ecological disasters, such as "Atomito," in which an otherworldly being takes hold of a community ravaged by pollution from a power plant; and "Chaco," about a vengeful Indigenous spirit corrupting the grandson of the man who drove his people from their land to make room for an oil plant. Colanzi draws loosely on the 1987 radiation accident in Goiânia, Brazil, for the eerie title story, in which a community unknowingly embraces radioactive waste left behind by a greedy corporation. Other entries delve into folklore and religion. In "The Cave," a pregnant woman defies convention by going out to hunt rather than resting. After she gives birth to twins, which are believed in her community to be a sign of wrongdoing, she takes a drastic and unsettling action. "The Narrow Way" depicts sisters who grow up sequestered from the outside world in their controlling church community, where they manage to find joy in music. Taken together, the stories paint an arresting portrait of corruption, industrialization, the power of nature, and supernatural forces. Readers will be captivated.
