Selva Almada

Translated by Annie McDermott

‘A major Latin American literary force.’ Shelf Awareness

Pájaro Tamai and Marciano Miranda, two young men, are dying in a deserted amusement park. The story begins almost at its end, just a little after the two main characters have faced off in a knife fight: the culmination of a rivalry that has pitted them against one another since childhood. The present in Brickmakers is a state of impending death, at moments marked by oneiric visions: Marciano is visited by the ghost of his father, who was murdered when he was a teenager, a father he had sworn to avenge, in a promise he could not keep. Pájaro is also visited, in a recurring nightmare, by his abusive father who disappeared years earlier.

Narrated with fury and passion, reminiscent of the pace in Faulkner and Hemingway’s prose, Almada’s second novel is a rural tragedy in the great American tradition, a story of love and violence where everything is put at stake. Continuing with the force and imagery of the filmic landscape of The Winds That Lays Waste, and the threatening atmosphere of Dead Girls, Brickmakers is yet another proof of Almada’s talent.