Name: The King Is Always Above the People
ISBN: 9780007517374

Daniel Alarcón

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction An unforgettable collection of stories from Daniel Alarcón, one of the New Yorker’s 20 best writers under 40, and one of the best storytellers of our time.

The King Is Always Above the People

LONGLISTED for the 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION An urgent, essential collection of stories about immigration, broken dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other tales of high stakes journeys, from the award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We Walk in Circles. Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In Daniel Alarcón's hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories with high stakes. In "The Thousands," people are on the move and forging new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown and incarceration in "The Bridge." A gang member discovers a way to forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in "The Ballad of Rocky Rontal." And in the tour de force novella, "The Auroras", a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a powerful woman. Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.

Stories

The King is Always Above the People

Sameer Vasta

One of the stories that Daniel Alarcón shares in this collection, “República and Grau,” features a blind beggar and a young boy who joins him to beg for money to supplement the family income. The boy changes his appearance, his mannerisms, all to make more money on the street corner. In “The Provincials,” Nelson pretends to be his more successful brother, turning pretense into personality, losing himself, and eventually, the people around him, too. What changes do we make to who we are in order to get more, be more? Who are we, really, when we continually shift ourselves based on where we are and who we are with? Questions Alarcón leaves us with; questions that are almost impossible to answer.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

The King Is Always Above the People

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