The Invisible Years - by Rodrigo Hasbún (Hardcover)

About the Book

""It's impossible to get a single answer from the past. It's not a key to anything. It's just a place we go to trick ourselves." Andrea and Julian haven't seen one another in twenty-one years - not since that tragic, fateful night their senior year of high school that marked their group of friends forever. A shocking phone call brings the two together again in Houston, where they begin to unravel the truth of that year, picking open long scabbed-over wounds from their upper-class adolescence in 1990s Bolivia and the scandal that ripped them apart. A writer unhappy in his career and his marriage, Julian has been novelizing the past for his next book, trying to make meaning out of the events that changed the course of their lives forever. "I'd thought that writing about that time would free me, relieve the burden of the invisible years," he writes, "but often it seems that it's done the reverse." Juxtaposing the naive invincibility of adolescence with the grasping uncertainties of adulthood, Invisible Years deftly weaves a coming-of-age tale that leaves the reader hanging on every word, even as they know how the cards fall in the end"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"It's impossible to get a single
answer from the past. It's not a key to anything. It's just a place we go to
trick ourselves."

Andrea and Julián haven't seen one
another in twenty-one years--not since that tragic, fateful night their senior
year of high school that marked their group of friends forever. A shocking
phone call brings the two together again in Houston, where they begin to unravel
the truth of that year, picking open long scabbed-over wounds from their
upper-class adolescence in 1990s Bolivia and the scandal that ripped them apart.

A writer unhappy in his career and
his marriage, Julián has been novelizing the past for his next book, trying to
make meaning out of the events that changed the course of their lives forever. "I'd
thought that writing about that time would free me, relieve the burden of the
invisible years," he writes, "but often it seems that it's done the reverse."
Juxtaposing the naïve invincibility of adolescence with the grasping uncertainties
of adulthood, The Invisible Years deftly weaves a coming-of-age tale that
leaves the reader hanging on every word, even as they know how the cards fall
in the end.

About the Author

Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian writer and screenwriter. He is the author of eight works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Affections (Simon & Schuster), which received an English PEN Award and has been translated into twelve languages. Named one of Granta's Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists in 2010, Hasbún's short stories have appeared in Granta, McSweeney's, Zoetrope: All-Story, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Houston.

Lily Meyer is a translator, critic, and author of the novel Short War (Deep Vellum). A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso's story collections Little Bird (Deep Vellum) and Ice for Martians (Columbia University Press). Her novel The End of Romance is forthcoming from Viking.