The Private Lives of Trees, Alejandro Zambra
The Private Lives of Trees, Alejandro Zambra
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The Private Lives of Trees

Author: Alejandro Zambra, Megan McDowell

Narrator: Gisela Chipe

Unabridged: 2 hr 9 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 02/14/2023


Synopsis

The second novel by the internationally celebrated writer Alejandro Zambra, a “short and strikingly original” (The New Yorker) book about the stories we spin for ourselves and our loved ones—now reissued by Penguin

Veronica is late, and Julián is increasingly convinced she won't ever come home. To pass the time, he improvises a story about trees to coax his stepdaughter, Daniela, to sleep. He has made a life as a literature professor, developing a novel about a man tending to a bonsai tree on the weekends. He is a narrator, an architect, a chronicler of other people's stories. But as the night stretches on before him, and the hours pass with no sign of Veronica, Julián finds himself caught up in the slipstream of the story of his life—of their lives together. What combination of desire and coincidence led them here, to this very night? What will the future—and possibly motherless—Daniela think of him and his stories? Why tell stories at all? 
 
The second novel by acclaimed Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra, The Private Lives of Trees overflows with his signature wit and his gift for crafting short novels that manage to contain whole worlds. 

About The Author

Alejandro Zambra is the author of Multiple Choice; My Documents, a finalist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; and three other works of fiction: Chilean Poet, Ways of Going Home, and The Private Lives of Trees. The recipient of numerous literary prizes in Chile and around the world, as well as a Cullman Center Fellowship, he has had stories published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Harper’s, among others. He lives in Mexico City. Megan McDowell (translator) is the recipient of a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among other awards, and has been nominated four times for the Booker International prize.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on September 09, 2017

When I travel taking photographs of trees is one of my favorite things to do. Colorado 2006 Life is a huge album for creating an instantaneous past, with loud and definite colors. A single tree, a private tree, is a visual anomaly. Without others, they can look... Lonely Maasai Mara 2010 Bashful......more

Goodreads review by Jola on March 12, 2023

Dear authors of Oxford Learners Dictionaries, Macmillan Dictionary, Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English et altri, Could you kindly consider adding a new word, zambrastic, to your lexicons? It would make writing reviews of books by Alejandro Zambra, a Chilean poet writer, simpler. To save y......more

Goodreads review by Oriana on January 19, 2011

Hey guess what? I am becoming a writer for the amazing art & culture blog and micropress CCLaP! And I vamped up this very review for my first contribution! *** When I found a proof of this little slip of a book, I assumed it was some kind of sampler, or a teaser maybe. But no: it truly is a complete n......more