Alejandro Zambra is the author of the story collection
My Documents, which was a finalist for the Frank O'Connor
International Short Story Award, and three previous
novels: Ways of Going Home, The Private Lives of
Trees, and Bonsai. His books have been translated into
more than ten languages. He has received numerous prizes in Chile,
including the Chilean Literary Critics' Award in 2007 and the
National Book Council's award for best novel in 2007 and 2012, as
well as international distinctions such as the Prince
Claus Award in Holland. His stories have appeared
in The New Yorker, The Paris
Review, Harper’s, Tin House, and McSweeney’s, among
others. In 2010, he was named one of Granta’s Best Young
Spanish-Language Novelists. A 2015–2016 Cullman Center fellow at
the New York Public Library, he divides his time between New York
and Santiago, Chile.
Megan McDowell is a Spanish language literary translator
from Richmond, Kentucky. With the exception
of Bonsai, she has translated all of Zambra’s books. She
lives in Santiago, Chile.
"This is a book about love, loss, guilt, empathy, inequality and
life under Chile's dictatorship. It's a slim volume, but calls for
lingering. It's beautiful, fascinating, brilliant, brutal, all of
the above." —NPR's "Guide To 2016’s Great Reads"
"Dazzling...a work of parody, but also of poetry." —The New
York Times Book Review
"Brilliant, innovative, beautiful." —The Guardian, "The Best
Books for Summer 2016"
"Playful and profound. . . . [Zambra's] comic timing is
impeccable." —Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com, "10 Books to Read in
July"
"Throughout Multiple Choice, Zambra traffics in a depth of
imagination and playfulness that is akin to a guessing game. As
with many of his earlier works, he is content to play with, prod,
and shake up the reader, confirming once again that the questions
we ask about the world and about ourselves are oftentimes far more
telling than the answers.” —NPR
"Multiple Choice made me laugh repeatedly, often ruefully. . .
. Zambra is superbly equipped to major in writing fiction
about the unhappiness of human beings, with secondary
concentrations in lampooning hypocrisy and satirizing repression. I
recommend you admit him to your reading list
immediately." —Jim Higgins, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Zambra uses this restrictive form for playfully serious ends,
questioning the very things — coherence and comprehension — that
such tests seek to measure and encourage." —The Boston Globe
"Brilliant . . . Like a literary exercise for the mind, but
strangely fun to decode." —Elle, "19 Summer Books That Everyone
Will Be Talking About"
"[Zambra] is at his most spare here, but also his most innovative.
By taking the tests he’s set for us, by participating in the
stories by reconstructing and editing them, we’re invited to
reflect on the most basic needs fiction tries to meet, or according
to which it is judged." —Financial Times
"Funny and moving." —Newsday
“Clever.” —Vanity Fair
"As exciting as it is mind-bending . . . Zambra’s novel is
wildly inventive and utterly confusing in the best way
possible." —PureWow, "The Ultimate 2016 Summer Book Guide"
“[Zambra's] stories are so playful and open, so simple and so much
fun to read, so equally joyful and sad, that they can be about
anything, or everything, or nothing. They really do invite the
reader’s participation in the construction of the text. Which makes
Zambra’s work, Multiple Choice included, captivating and meaningful
in the best possible ways.” –The Rumpus
“A small book packed with meaning and space for interpretation. By
structuring it as a test, the author comments on the rigidity of
Chile’s former fascist leader. By allowing the reader to meditate
on how to make sense of each puzzling question, he offers an
alternative to enforced structure.” –The Huffington Post, Book
of the Week
“A great book…[that] infuses the format of a standardized test
with: (a) playfulness, (b) sadness, (c) frustration, (d) political
commentary and (e) a great story.” –Shelf Awareness
"Witty and experimental . . . It’s like taking a test by a
test writer gone mad." —Vox, "18 New Books to Read This
Summer"
"[Zambra turns] the reader into writer and editor and critic
and then back again in a series of multiple-choice questions...all
exhibiting [his] knack for cleverly self-aware
metafiction." —The Village Voice
"An exercise in flouting literary conventions . . . This sly
slender book is divided into 90 multiple-choice questions
suggesting that how we respond to a story depends on where the
writer places narrative stress." —The Millions, "Most
Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview"
"The perfect next step for an author who has always specialized in
short, lyric works and who has increasingly embraced a hybrid genre
of fiction that sort of acts like a novel but kind of looks like a
short story collection." —Literary Hub, "21 Books You Should
Read This July"
“Amusing and unexpected . . . In just a few pages
[Zambra] manages to be repeatedly engaging, smart, funny, and sad."
—Publishers Weekly
"Consistently witty and provocative . . . True or false: can
effective fiction be written in the format of a standardized test?
Answer: pretty much, and few are as equipped to do it as well as
Chilean writer Zambra." —Kirkus Reviews
“Zambra is the defining light of today’s Latin American
literature—an author whose cult is about to take over, the one
we'll all be congratulating ourselves on having known about in the
early days, before his deceptively slender masterpieces lay on
every American reader's night table. Multiple Choice is the most
daring distillation yet of his inimitable, take-no-prisoners
genius.” —John Wray, author of The Lost Time Accidents
“When I read Zambra I feel like someone’s shooting fireworks inside
my head. His prose is as compact as a grain of gunpowder, but its
allusions and ramifications branch out and illuminate even the most
remote corners of our minds.” —Valeria Luiselli, author of The
Story of My Teeth
“Zambra builds an elegant structure out of the important elements
of life—competition, pride, vigor, death, sex—against a landscape
of political menace. Read his book and, as with all true art,
you'll be left wondering what it means but feeling that you know.”
—Atticus Lish, author of Preparation for the Next Life
“Multiple Choice is unlike anything I've ever encountered before.
With his test questions and answers, the incomparable Alejandro
Zambra creates verbal playgrounds for reverie, imagination,
thought, and memory, and leads you through labyrinthine corridors
in which you inevitably encounter yourself. Reading this book is a
wonderfully disconcerting and unforgettable
experience.” —Francisco Goldman, author of Say Her
Name
"There is no writer like Alejandro Zambra, no one as bold, as
subtle, as funny. Multiple Choice is his most accomplished work
yet, an apparently playful literary game you quickly realize is
also deadly serious. This book is not to be missed." —Daniel
Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk In Circles
“Falling in love with Zambra’s literature is a fascinating road to
travel. Imaginative and original, he is a master of short forms; I
adore his devastating audacity.” —Enrique Vila-Matas, author of The
Illogic of Kassel
"I loved Multiple Choice. I hate exams, but I've sat this one a few
times already. I'd give it an A-. The minus for being too smart and
getting away with it." —Stuart Evers, author of Your Father Sends
His Love
"As slim as Chile herself. As serrated and complex as her
riddled coastline. There's so much to admire and enjoy in this
dazzling little book." —Gavin Corbett, author of Green Glowing
Skull
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