Pilgrimage of Alpha - by Juan Cárdenas (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A hallucinatory frontier novel about the uneasy alliance between art and empire, from one of the most lauded voices in contemporary Latin American literature.

In 1850, amid rising political tensions, the Republic of New Granada sends an expedition to document its land and people. Among its members are Manuel Ancízar, whose book Pilgrimage of Alpha will help invent Colombia's myth of itself, and English painter Henry Price, who hopes only to adequately depict the glaciers and jungles he sees--and, by night, to murmur his clumsy Wordsworth translations to the botanist with whom he shares a tent. When Price encounters the paintings of a reclusive local artist, his faith in his own vision begins to falter.

Nearly two centuries later, a fictional essayist reads Ancízar while looking out on the violence and ecological devastation of the present. As he lets his mind stray in "irresponsible fantasy," he enacts and reenacts the historical drama of seeing, continually shuffling symbols: jungle, river, plains; dandy, madman, lover; machete, dictator, captive.

Disrupting history with a botanist's eye for detail and an art critic's sensitivity for visual language, Cárdenas constructs a novel like a nineteenth-century diorama, in which the subtlest shift in light can dramatically alter a scene. By the National Book Award-nominated author and translator of The Devil of the Provinces, Pilgrimage of Alpha--as precise as an optical illusion and as vertiginous as a dream--asks what we think we're seeing when we look at the Americas.

Review Quotes

Praise for Ornamental

"With pitch-black comedy, Ornamental, nimbly translated by Lizzie Davis, channels the ways that egomaniacs in science and art--in any field--rise to the top, up the pyramid of capitalism... The rhythm of Cárdenas's writing compels and reassures, as if driven by the very humanity the lab has helped suppress."--Nathan Scott McNamara, The New York Times

"A supremely talented and original writer... Cárdenas's surreal examination of addiction and compulsion is a unique and necessary contribution to the conversation."--Julianne Pachico, The Guardian

"Brilliantly executed and cleverly translated, Ornamental leaves us with a fresh understanding of the creation of art and the nature of meaning-making."--Dashiel Carrera, Los Angeles Review of Books

"Cárdenas generates queasy intrigue from something as strange as the birth of a devil child and as mundane as a text message that has been read but not replied to... Briskly paced, thoughtful, and truly weird: a whodunit that takes on the very idea of blame."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Juan Cárdenas is masterful in his rendering of dreamy dreams, in his evocation of workplace psychology, in his urge to keep shifting the structure of his narrative even while he consistently delivers a prose so energetic, restless, and particular that its astonishing poetic qualities don't give us any pause."--Forrest Gander

"In this disquieting dystopia, impeccably translated by Lizzie Davis, the prose of Juan Cárdenas surpasses the beauty promised by the sinister drug of happiness. A very subtle, smart book indeed."--Alia Trabucco Zerán

"Perhaps the most damning fictional portrait of late capitalism I have ever read, at once absurd and startlingly relevant, Ornamental is a subtle and beautifully written nightmare."--Brian Evenson

Praise for The Devil of the Provinces

"A supernatural thriller, a murder mystery, and a rumination on personal and environmental catastrophe--The Devil of the Provinces is none of these things and all of these things. With skillful economy, Juan Cárdenas crafts a story where everyone is complicit, even the reader. A brilliant, ambitious novel that searches for meaning in the shadows of a dangerous and ambiguous world."--Mark Haber

"Catastrophe and grace intertwine throughout The Devil of the Provinces, as do the horror and beauty of what remains hidden. The result, in the hands of Juan Cárdenas, is hypnotic, disturbing, memorable."--Rodrigo Hasbún

About the Author

Juan Cárdenas is a Colombian writer, art critic, curator, and translator. He is the author of eight works of fiction, including The Devil of the Provinces (longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award in Translated Literature) and Ornamental (finalist for the 2021 PEN Translation Award), and has translated the works of William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Thomas Wolfe, and others into Spanish.

Lizzie Davis has translated over a dozen books, including novels by Juan Cárdenas, Elena Medel, Daniela Tarazona, and Pilar Fraile.