Multiple Choice
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A "brilliant, innovative, beautiful" (The Guardian) book from the acclaimed author of Chilean Poet
"Dazzling . . . a work of parody, but also of poetry." —The New York Times Book Review
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR, THE GUARDIAN, AND THE IRISH TIMES
“Latin America’s new literary star” (The New Yorker), Alejandro Zambra is celebrated around the world for his strikingly original, slyly funny, daringly unconventional fiction. Now, at the height of his powers, Zambra returns with his most audaciously brilliant book yet.
Written in the form of a standardized test, Multiple Choice invites the reader to respond to virtuoso language exercises and short narrative passages through multiple-choice questions that are thought-provoking, usually unanswerable, and often absurd. It offers a new kind of reading experience, one in which the reader participates directly in the creation of meaning, and the nature of storytelling itself is called into question. At once funny, poignant, and political, Multiple Choice is about love and family, authoritarianism and its legacies, and the conviction that, rather than learning to think for ourselves, we are trained to obey and repeat. Serious in its literary ambition and playful in its execution, it confirms Alejandro Zambra as one of the most important writers working in any language.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, ELLE, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE MILLIONS, VOX, LIT HUB, THE BBC, THE GUARDIAN AND PUREWOW
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this short, experimental book of fiction, Zambra (My Documents) skillfully adopts the form of a standardized test to spin off dozens of micro-tales. The form of the test, which is based on the actual Chilean Aptitude Test Zambra took as a youth, is composed of five numbered sections, totaling 90 questions. The book opens with questions and possible answers that are simply lists of words, not giving Zambra much room to stretch his storytelling wings. The following sections, composed of short sentences, read like flash fiction or prose poems and are frequently amusing and unexpected. Far more compelling are the longer "sentence elimination" sections wherein Zambra is able to deliver a self-contained short story in a handful of pages. In one story, a student convinces his smarter twin brother to take his exam for him. Another story presents a tricky problem for a couple getting married in Chile, when divorce was still illegal there. The final story is a touching message from a remorseful father to his son. Zambra's writing is intensely tied to his Chilean identity, and nearly every story or text references Chile in some way. In just a few pages he manages to be repeatedly engaging, smart, funny, and sad.