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 commissions 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 writer 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, captive, king.

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

"Juan Cárdenas is masterful . . . He consistently delivers a prose so energetic, restless, and particular that its astonishing poetic qualities don't give us any pause. And Lizzie Davis is one of our most rewarding and savvy translators."--Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Be With

"With pitch-black comedy, [Cárdenas] channels the ways that egomaniacs . . . rise to the top, up the pyramid of capitalism . . . The rhythm of his writing compels and reassures, as if driven by the very humanity [they help] suppress."--Nathan Scott McNamara, The New York Times

"A supremely talented and original writer."--Julianne Pachico, The Guardian

"Juan Cárdenas is brilliant. His books are delirious, funny, provocative, tender, and filled with beauty. Pilgrimage of Alpha will blow your mind."--Jazmina Barrera, author of The Queen of Swords

"Juan Cárdenas is one of the most interesting writers working in the Spanish language today."--Daniel Saldaña París, author of The Dance and the Fire

"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, Starred Review

"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, author of Phantom Limb

"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, author of Clean

"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

"Hypnotic, disturbing . . . Catastrophe and grace intertwine throughout The Devil of the Provinces, as do the horror and beauty of what remains hidden."--Rodrigo Hasbún, author of Affections

"Brilliant, ambitious . . . [Juan Cárdenas] searches for meaning in the shadows of a dangerous and ambiguous world."--Mark Haber, author of Lesser Ruins

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.