Short stories by Daniel Alarcón
Daniel Alarcón is associate editor of Etiqueta Negra, a monthly magazine published in his native Lima, Peru. His short story collection, War by Candlelight (Harper-Collins), was a finalist for the 2006 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. His first novel, Lost City Radio (HarperCollins, 2007), was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, and Chicago Tribune. He lives in Oakland, California.
Listing 4 stories.
In 1980s Peru, a dyslexic drug trafficker and grade school dropout and a wealthy, famous playwright labeled a terrorist for his play about killing the president form an unlikely relationship as cellmates in the notorious Collectors Prison of San Jacinto. The playwright convinces the men in their block to stage a performance of the play that landed him in jail, bringing a sense of comradery and unity; however, months after his release, he learns that the entire block, including his lover, was killed in the military suppression of a prison revolt.
A boy learns a lesson when he is recruited to help a blind man panhandle at an intersection.
A young actor tours for two months with a legendary troupe through the Andes, and continues to reflect on it nine years later.
After a death in the family, a son travels with his father to his rural Mexican hometown to settle the estate. The town is littered with all the abandoned houses, roads, and people left behind that didn't migrate to big cities; a fate which his father fears will be his if he does not immigrate to California like his brother.