Ramifications - by Daniel Saldaña Paris (Paperback)

About the Book

A neurotic young man, self-confined to his bed, reflects on the turning point of his childhood: his mother's disappearance.

Book Synopsis

A neurotic young man, self-confined to his bed, reflects on the turning point of his childhood: his mother's disappearance.

Review Quotes

Praise for Ramifications

A Millions Most Anticipated Book of Fall 2020

"[S]trange and elegant. . . . Paríiacute;s brilliantly explores memory, masculinity, and familial drama in equal measure. The result is an affecting account of arrested development." -Publishers Weekly

"A Dostoyevskian tale set in the Mexico City of today." --Kirkus

"In Daniel Saldañntilde;a París's resonant novel Ramifications, an eventful summer has ripple effects that last decades. . . . a rich, smart, and satisfying rendering of abandonment and loss, whose effects reverberate through time." --Foreword Reviews

"Ramifications is a masterful and devastating fairy tale about the particular loneliness of a child lost in the woods of machismo and social revolts." --Alejandro Zambra

"Ramifications is a haunting, hallucinatory tale of a man trying to make sense of his mother's escape from a stifling middle class life and dead-end marriage to return to her long-dormant revolutionary agitations in Chiapas. This unthinkable--and yet, understandable--abandonment leads us through a harrowing adventure and, ultimately, to the terrifying truth. Daniel Saldaña París brilliantly folds this story into itself, deftly dissolving time and reality, while constructing an intricate, intimate origami of heartbreak, dark humor, familial fractures and profound dispossession." --Tanaïs

About the Author

Daniel Saldaña París is an essayist, poet, and novelist born in Mexico City. His first novel, Among Strange Victims, published to critical acclaim in 2016, was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award. He has been a fellow at Union des Écrivaines et des Écrivains Québécois, the Omi International Arts Center, The Banff Centre, and The MacDowell Colony. His work has appeared in BOMB, Guernica, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, The Guardian, El País, and on KCRW's Unfictional, among others. In 2017 he was named by the Hay Festival as one of the best Latin-American writers under the age of 40.

Christina MacSweeney was awarded the 2016 Valle Inclán Translation Prize for her translations of Valeria Luiselli's The Story of My Teeth, and her translations of Daniel Saldaña París's novel Among Strange Victims was a finalist in the 2017 Best Translated Book Award. In 2017 she published a translation of Elvira Navarro's A Working Woman, followed in 2018 by Empty Set (Verónica Gerber Bicecci), and Tomb Song and The House of the Pain of Others (Julián Herbert), all of which have received critical acclaim. Her work has also been included in various anthologies of Latina American Literature. Christina also collaborated with Verónica Gerber Bicecci on the bilingual book Palabras migrantes / Migrant Words. Her translations of Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino (Julián Herbert), On Lighthouses, a book-length essay by Jazmina Barrera, and Elvira Navarro's short story collection Rabbit Island are forthcoming in 2020.