Endorsements (in hand): Alejandro Zambra, Patricio Pron
Endorsements (potential): Claire Louise-Bennett, Jenny Offill,
Rachel Cusk, Heidi Julavits
Early access copies
National print and online campaign
Targeted bookseller mailing
Excerpts under consideration at the New Yorker, Paris Review
Advertising: Bookforum
Promotion at: BookExpo America, Winter Institute, PEN World Voices,
Heartland Fall Forum
Promotion on Coffee House Press e-newsletter, website, and social
media channels
Giveaways on Twitter, Instagram & Goodreads
Simultaneous print and e-book release, with e-book ISBN to be
included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and
whenever print ISBN is listed
Diego Zúñiga (born 1987) is a Chilean author and journalist. He is
the author of two novels and the recipient of the Juegos Literarios
Gabriela Mistral and the Chilean National Book and Reading Council
Award. He lives in Santiago de Chile.
Megan McDowel is a Spanish language literary translator from
Kentucky. Her work includes books by Alejandro Zambra, Arturo
Fontaine, Lina Meruane, Mariana Enriquez, Álvaro Bisama, and Juan
Emar. Her translations have been published in The New Yorker, The
Paris Review, Tin House, McSweeney's, Words Without Borders,
Mandorla, and Vice, among others. She lives in Santiago, Chile.
“This arresting and deeply affecting read, despite its short
length, packs a punch.” —Publishers Weekly
“Deftly written, there is much to admire on the page.” —Fanzine
“It’s precisely this coolly observant language, deepening with the
story, that lets us register the buried despair.” —Library
Journal
“A smart, straightforward narrative that reveals the varied mood a
shared experience can evoke.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The simple, elegant narrative braiding- a paternal recto, a
maternal verso- serves as both metaphor for a boy who is of two
minds about everything and as a driveshaft, propelling the reader
to a too-soon ending in a state of horror bordering on awe.” —The
Rumpus, “HORN!” review
“Camanchaca has one of the strongest novel openings I’ve read in
years, a knockout vignette that disarms the reader with a few beats
of unnecessarily specific detail, and then seamlessly shifts into
fast and steady motion while glancing across a violent mystery all
in just a quarter of a page.” —Electric Literature
“This slim book promises emotional and intellectual challenges for
the intrepid reader.” —Booklist Online
“Among this novel’s many merits (which go far beyond the
stylistic), Zúñiga has achieved something more: he has depicted,
with astonishing perfection, the mediocrity of the Chilean middle
class, its simplicity and its emptiness: characters who barely
communicate and pass their time watching TV, sleeping, and eating
sandwiches wherever they may be; half-brothers who hardly know each
other and look at each other with jealousy; families whose only
epic, at the end of the day, is an attempt to buy brand-name
clothes and take care of a dying dog.” —World Literature Today
“The novel is episodic, swinging from the past to the present, with
no bit lasting longer than a page. The effect is poetic, and
Zúñiga’s bare sentences also resemble the Atacama.” —Colorado
Review
“Camanchaca is a riddle, a mind game, sometimes maddening but
always compelling.” —Star Tribune
“The tidy parcels pack jolts of emotion as Zúñiga discloses the
foundation of the burdens the young narrator has carried through
his life, every page another piece of the sad, damaged puzzle. As
powerful as it is spare, Camanchaca is a raw trip through an
emotional wasteland.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers
“The simple, straightforward prose flies across the dry pages
exactly as if Zúñiga were driving you across the desert himself.”
—Atticus Review
“Camanchaca . . . succeeds at combining the particularity of its
setting with scenarios that feel almost classical: a murdered
brother and the perversion of the mother-son relationship. But it
also dramatizes the struggle to understand the previous generation,
whether the truth sought is that of family or country.” —BOMB
“An unexpected voice, a new landscape—a sober, risky, unsettling
and surprising book.” —Alejandro Zambra
“The amiable placidity of Camanchaca’s young narrator attests to a
safeguarding remoteness that cannot quite suppress a terrible
mounting compulsion to confront his family’s past and be released
from its burden of secrets. Diligent but lacking the capacity to
form judgments, distressed yet detached, I don’t think I’ve come
across a more evocative depiction of the painstaking transition
from adolescence into the adult world.” —Claire-Louise Bennett
“Diego Zúñiga is the author of an extraordinary first novel.
Camanchaca is written with austerity and a laconic and fragmented
style that is like the shreds through which we are able to catch
glimpses of the landscape through the fog.” —Patricio Pron
“Nothing is stated outright in Camanchaca, everything is sounded
out, intuited, like silhouettes or protrusions whose contours jut
out just barely through cloth. . . . [Zúñiga] veils an entire way
of life, a kind of underwater `ethos’ ?in which there nests an
invisible substructure of violence, abuse, and desolation.” —Pablo
Torche, Letras en línea
“A sparse, innovative and heartrending study of a broken family… A
debut novella that is quite stunning in its compact emotional
heft.” —Brazos Bookstore, “Buyer’s Corner: Best of 2017 So Far”
“A thoughtful, even meditative, story of a young man for whom the
problems of his parents, the problems of the adult world that he is
approaching, are still just beyond his understanding.” —Josh Cook,
Porter Square Books
“The past converges with the present in this startling debut by
Diego Zúñiga. A young man, uncertain in life, penetrates his
family’s dysfunctional past during a road trip across the Chilean
desert. Taut and fragmented, brilliant and brave,Camanchaca
perfectly captures the difficult transition from young man to
adult. A small diamond of a novel that once again proves literature
can break your heart and infuse the spirit at the same time.” —Mark
Haber, Brazos Bookstore
“This arresting and deeply affecting read, despite its short
length, packs a punch.”—Publishers Weekly
“Deftly written, there is much to admire on the page.”—Fanzine
“...It’s precisely this coolly observant language, deepening with
the story, that lets us register the buried despair.”—Library
Journal
“A smart, straightforward narrative that reveals the varied mood a
shared experience can evoke.”—Kirkus Reviews
“The simple, elegant narrative braiding- a paternal recto, a
maternal verso- serves as both metaphor for a boy who is of two
minds about everything and as a driveshaft, propelling the reader
to a too-soon ending in a state of horror bordering on awe.”—The
Rumpus, "HORN!" review
“Camanchaca has one of the strongest novel openings I’ve read in
years, a knockout vignette that disarms the reader with a few beats
of unnecessarily specific detail, and then seamlessly shifts into
fast and steady motion while glancing across a violent mystery all
in just a quarter of a page…”—Electric Literature
“This slim book promises emotional and intellectual challenges for
the intrepid reader.”—Booklist Online
“Among this novel’s many merits (which go far beyond the
stylistic), Zúñiga has achieved something more: he has depicted,
with astonishing perfection, the mediocrity of the Chilean middle
class, its simplicity and its emptiness: characters who barely
communicate and pass their time watching TV, sleeping, and eating
sandwiches wherever they may be; half-brothers who hardly know each
other and look at each other with jealousy; families whose only
epic, at the end of the day, is an attempt to buy brand-name
clothes and take care of a dying dog.”—World Literature Today
"...the tidy parcels pack jolts of emotion as Zúñiga discloses the
foundation of the burdens the young narrator has carried through
his life, every page another piece of the sad, damaged puzzle. As
powerful as it is spare, Camanchaca is a raw trip through an
emotional wasteland."—Shelf Awareness for Readers, starred
review
“Camanchaca… succeeds at combining the particularity of its setting
with scenarios that feel almost classical: a murdered brother and
the perversion of the mother-son relationship. But it also
dramatizes the struggle to understand the previous generation,
whether the truth sought is that of family or country.”—BOMB
"An unexpected voice, a new landscape—a sober, risky, unsettling
and surprising book."—Alejandro Zambra
“The amiable placidity of Camanchaca’s young narrator attests to a
safeguarding remoteness that cannot quite suppress a terrible
mounting compulsion to confront his family’s past and be released
from its burden of secrets. Diligent but lacking the capacity to
form judgments, distressed yet detached, I don’t think I’ve come
across a more evocative depiction of the painstaking transition
from adolescence into the adult world.”—Claire-Louise Bennett
"Diego Zúñiga is the author of an extraordinary first novel.
Camanchaca is written with austerity and a laconic and fragmented
style that is like the shreds through which we are able to catch
glimpses of the landscape through the fog." —Patricio Pron
“Nothing is stated outright in Camanchaca, everything is sounded
out, intuited, like silhouettes or protrusions whose contours jut
out just barely through cloth. . . . [Zúñiga] veils an entire way
of life, a kind of underwater `ethos’ ?in which there nests an
invisible substructure of violence, abuse, and desolation.”—Pablo
Torche, Letras en linea
“A thoughtful, even meditative, story of a young man for whom the
problems of his parents, the problems of the adult world that he is
approaching, are still just beyond his understanding.”—Josh Cook,
Porter Square Books
“Most impressively, [Camanchaca] can potentially be read three
different ways, as two equally solemn stories volley to make one
emotionally cloudy journey through the desert fog.” —The Book
Table, shelf talker from Patrick Battle
“The past converges with the present in this startling debut by
Diego Zúñiga. A young man, uncertain in life, penetrates his
family’s dysfunctional past during a road trip across the Chilean
desert. Taut and fragmented, brilliant and brave, Camanchaca
perfectly captures the difficult transition from young man to
adult. A small diamond of a novel that once again proves literature
can break your heart and infuse the spirit at the same time.”—Mark
Haber, Brazos Bookstore
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