Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Among Strange Victims
    Unavailable
    Among Strange Victims
    Unavailable
    Among Strange Victims
    Ebook288 pages3 hours

    Among Strange Victims

    By Daniel Saldaña París

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A greatly enjoyable and splendidly well-written suburban farce.” —Yuri Herrera
     
    Rodrigo likes his vacant lot, its resident chicken, and being left alone. But when passivity finds him accidentally married to Cecilia, he trades Mexico City for the sun-bleached desolation of his hometown and domestic life with Cecilia for the debauched company of a poet, a philosopher, and Micaela, whose allure includes the promise of time travel. Earthy, playful, and sly, Among Strange Victims is a psychedelic ode to the pleasures of not measuring up.
     
    “Brief, brilliantly written, and kissed by a sense of the absurd. . . . like a much lazier, Mexico City version of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man.” —John Powers, Fresh Air
     
    “Read this messy, shaggy picaresque for its ample page-by-page pleasures, which include devilishly clever syntax, a charming tendency to digress, and satisfying flashes of Rodrigo and Marcelo getting their act together.” —Publisher’s Weekly
     
    “A welcome infusion of vitality into North American literature.” —Bookslut
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 16, 2015
    ISBN9781566894319
    Unavailable
    Among Strange Victims
    Author

    Daniel Saldaña París

    Daniel Saldaña París (Ciudad de México, 1984) es au­tor del libro de poemas La máquina autobiográfica, del proyecto transmedia Método Universal de Poesía Derivada y de las novelas En medio de extrañas víc­timas y El nervio principal, ambas traducidas a va­rios idiomas. En 2017 fue incluido en la lista Bogo­tá39 de los mejores escritores menores de cuarenta años de América Latina y en 2020 obtuvo el Premio de Literatura Eccles Centre & Hay Festival.

    Read more from Daniel Saldaña París

    Related to Among Strange Victims

    Related ebooks

    Hispanic & Latino Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Zoë Ruiz

      Dec 9, 2017

      I’m currently reading Aisha Sabatini Sloan’s essay collection Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit, which was chosen by Maggie Nelson as the winner of the 1913 Open Prose Contest. I’ve been an admirer of Sloan’s essays since her first collection, The Fluenc

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Ceremony

      Sep 6, 2022

      It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. M

      5 min read

    • Article

      I Was a Public Schooler

      Jun 9, 2020

      The application to Waverley Glen Academy required that I spend a day sitting in on freshman classes and mixing with the student body to see how well I’d fit in. I was twelve. Picture the gleaming wooden corridors, the Persian rugs, the monogrammed si

      14 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Manguso, Blake, Lavery, and More

      Feb 8, 2022

      Sarah Blake's latest post-apocalyptic novel, Mellors' satirical debut about a couple's impulsive marriage, and Lavery's speculative memoir are new this week The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Manguso, Blake, Lavery, and More appeared first on

      5 min read

    • Article

      On The Shelf

      Apr 14, 2020

      Reverse Cowgirl by McKenzie Wark is not your average autobiography. The book mirrors the fragmented and sometimes confusing nature of the author’s life. Wark freely admits she has no answers to the many questions she poses or to the situations confro

      3 min read

    • Article

      Joseph Cassara Wants His Characters to Break Your Heart

      Feb 1, 2018

      The Puerto Rican drag queen is a recognizable personification of New York in the 1980s, the neighbor (and opposite) of the white, Gordon Gekko-style master of the universe with his slicked-back hair. In The House of Impossible Beauties, debut novelis

      12 min read

    • Article

      Four Stories

      Mar 15, 2019

      There are three elements to the photograph. There is the grocery cart in the background, the white Renault hatchback in the foreground, and then at center there is the reclusive philosopher who explored literature’s impossibility. This is one of only

      5 min read

    • Article

      An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List

      Jun 8, 2020

      These recent poetry collections offer poignant narratives and snapshots of racial injustice in America. The post An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Best Translated Book Awards Names 2020 Longlists

      Apr 1, 2020

      The 35 books on this year's fiction and poetry longlists represent 20 different countries and feature authors writing in 18 languages. The post Best Translated Book Awards Names 2020 Longlists appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      The American linden sways nonplussed by the storm,a bounce here, a shimmy there, just shaking like musicleft over from the night’s end wafting into the avenues before sleep.I remember once walking down Clinton Street, and singingthat line returning,

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Stay

      Dec 15, 2018

      Pushed from its hidden end, a sofa drifted into the parking lot under my window. The pushes became feeble thrusts and then short convulsions, until, with a final spasm, the couch nudged one of the abandoned supermarket carts by the trash containers a

      17 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Adam Dalva

      Dec 14, 2020

      Anyone who teaches creative writing knows that our students bring us to the most implausible worlds—in one class, you might experience a sword fight on Mars, a break-up in a college dorm, and an admission that changes an identity forever. In an impos

      7 min read

    Reviews for Among Strange Victims

    4/5

    8 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Towards the end of this strange novel, Rodrigo, our listless protagonist, begins pontificating about Descartes’ piece of wax--the very object that served to addle Descartes into nearly nihilistic skepticism (but for the grace of God)! Rodrigo’s strange recollection of Descartes’ Meditations reflects his understanding of his own life: Descartes sees the wax in a particular shape. A second figure removes the wax and places it over a fire, and remolds it. Can the first person recognize the newly presented wax as the same? Rodrigo concludes that if the first figure cannot determine it is the same piece of wax, then our senses cannot not reveal to us the principle of identity. We can only understand the piece of wax as the same piece of wax if we witness the process of its transformation. (Notably, Descartes is both first and second figure--no one conceals and then reveals it to him). I suspect Descartes is a master key to Rodrigo’s self-understanding, which--on a physical and philosophical level--is an exercise in a oddly principled non-formation of the self. Rodrigo’s life happens to him; he endeavors to make as few choices as possible: to let the ebb and flow of happenstance dictate his trajectory. “My life has the disadvantage of not being completely my own...The greater part of my time is spent in inertia, and that includes the most crucial decisions, which I take like someone picking a card from a deck held out to him. The result is never magic; I can’t even perceive the adrenaline of objective chance or observe a conspiracy of symbols behind what happens. I just go on living.” Rodrigo behaves as though he is a rudderless ghostship, waiting for a gale force wind (or a slight breeze) to tilt his prow towards a new life course. A certain will-lessness is a driving theme here, and also what makes Rodrigo immune to moralism: he makes no blame- or praise-worthy choices--he makes no choice at all. Rodrigo is more piece of wax than he is Figure 1 or Figure 2 trying to determine if he is the same at T1 and T2. If he values anything at all beyond his apartment view, his hen and his collection of teabags, it is his own intangibility--his own commitment to not having an identity.
    • 5/5
      I wasnt sure about this book for a long way through. And then part way it switches directions and I thought I was reading a series of short stories. But it all comes together in the end in a satisfyingly unexpected and bizarre way and I loved it.