Alejandro Zambra: Bonsai

An hour later Julio receives his salary: three ten-thousand-peso bills with which he had planned to pay his expenses for at least the next two weeks. Instead of walking to his apartment he hails a taxi and asks the driver to drive for thirty thousand pesos. He repeats it, he explains and even gives the money to the driver in advance: go in any direction, go in circles, in diagonal lines, it’s all the same, I’ll get out of your taxi when the thirty thousand pesos are spent.

It’s a long trip, without music, from Providencia to Las Rejas, and later, for the return, Estación Central, Avenida Matta, Avenida Grecia, Tobalaba, Providencia, Bellavista. During the journey Julio doesn’t answer any of the cab driver’s questions. He doesn’t hear him.

ALEJANDRO ZAMBRA is acclaimed as the greatest writer of Chile’s younger generation. He is a poet and critic and currently teaches literature at the Diego Portales University in Santiago. Bonsai is his first novel. It was awarded Chile’s Literary Critics’ Award for Best Novel.

Translator CAROLINA DE ROBERTIS was raised in England, Switzerland, and California by Uruguayan parents. She is the author of the novel The Invisible Mountain .