Overview

Simón López Trujillo’s ‘mind-blowing’ (Gabriela Cabezón Cámara) debut takes readers into a dry and degraded, fire-prone landscape where humanity has encroached a step too far into the natural world, and a deadly fungus mounts its own resistance. In the disorienting, devastatingly tense world of López Trujillo, a eucalyptus farm worker named Pedro starts coughing. Several of his coworkers die of a strange fungal disease, which has jumped to humans for the first time, but Pedro, miraculously, awakes. His survival fascinates a foreign mycologist, as well as a local priest, who dubs his mysterious mutterings to be the words of a prophet. Meanwhile Pedro’s kids are left to fend for themselves: the young Cata, whose creepy art projects are getting harder and harder to decipher, and Patricio, who wasn’t ready to be thrust into the role of father. Their competing efforts to reckon with Pedro’s condition eventually meet in a horrifying climax that readers will never forget. For readers of Jeff VanderMeer and Samanta Schweblin, López Trujillo is a next-generation Bolaño with a fresh, speculative edge and a mind that’s always one step ahead of us.

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9781917189354

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Reviews

‘Melodious, innovative, and delightfully surreal, the multiple distinct voices of Pedro the Vast weave a story that pushes at our duties to the earth, our families, and communities, that exposes the heartbreaking dystopia of our present. Simón’s atmospheric prose fully dunked me into this story of the linked lives of Chileans.’ -- Pemi Aguda, author of the National Book Award finalist <em>Ghostroots</em> ‘We needed this and it‘s here: Simón is producing a mutant literature, a literature that ensures that human flesh is not made of humanity but of myriad other beings. Mind-blowing.’ -- Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of <em>The Adventures of China Iron</em> ‘Lucid and beautifully written, lyrical yet direct. It gathers unforgettable words and images, transporting us to the open (opening) wound in our vast and devastated land. An exceptional debut.’ -- Alia Trabucco Zerán, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of <em>Clean</em>

‘An inspired mycelial novel that is as propulsive as it is unsettling. Myers shines in her translation of fever dream while López Trujillo, with the excentric darkness of much of the best contemporary Latin American literature, hypnotises and haunts.’ -- Jennifer Croft, translator and author of <em>The Extinction of Irena Rey</em> ‘Melodious, innovative, and delightfully surreal, the multiple distinct voices of Pedro the Vast weave a story that pushes at our duties to the earth, our families, and communities, that exposes the heartbreaking dystopia of our present. Simón’s atmospheric prose fully dunked me into this story of the linked lives of Chileans.’ -- Pemi Aguda, author of the National Book Award finalist <em>Ghostroots</em> ‘We needed this and it’s here: Simón is producing a mutant literature, a literature that ensures that human flesh is not made of humanity but of myriad other beings. Mind-blowing.’ -- Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of <em>The Adventures of China Iron</em> ‘Lucid and beautifully written, lyrical yet direct. It gathers unforgettable words and images, transporting us to the open (opening) wound in our vast and devastated land. An exceptional debut.’ -- Alia Trabucco Zerán, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of <em>Clean</em>

Author Information

Simón López Trujillo is a Chilean writer and translator whose works include El vasto territorio (2021), Maestranza (2018), and Intemperie (2017). He has been awarded the Roberto Bolaño Award and has received grants and fellowships from the Chilean Ministry of Arts & Culture, the Pablo Neruda Foundation, and MacDowell. Robin Myers is a poet and translator. She won the 2025 National Book Award in Translated Literature for We Are Green and Trembling, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara. Other recent translations include Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza (co-translated with Sarah Booker), Restoration by Ave Barrera (co-translated with Ellen Jones), and A Father Is Born by Andrés Neuman, among many other works of poetry and prose.

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