Simone – A Novel - Softcover

"A love story told with a content that is erotic and at the same time social and political."--Ricardo Piglia "El Pais (Spain) "

Lalo s selection as . . . recipient of the prestigious Romulo Gallegos International Novel Prize is an event of transcendental significance. This virtually unknown writer shares the honor with immortals like Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando del Paso, Abel Posse, Manuel Mejia Vallejo, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Mempo Giardinelli, Javier Marias, Angeles Mastretta, Roberto Bolano, Enrique Vila Matas, Fernando Vallejo, Isaac Rosa, Elena Poniatowska, William Ospina, and Ricardo Piglia. But if the distinction conferred to this intriguing writer is important in literary terms, even more interesting is the recognition that is given through his work to a nation that is not recognized as such, yet. . . . Against all odds, Lalo s voice was able to transcend the dead zone of colonialism, to bring to life not only a great novel that debunks preconceptions of Spanish-language literature in less than two hundred pages, but also the clairvoyant possibility of a nation. --Monica Gutierrez "Huffington Post ""

"Simone "has the stuff of the great literary works . . . . The novel is a good example showing that literature in Puerto Rico, like the history of the country, is made of paradoxical relationships of love and hate, of liminality and darkness, most always in the contingency of the contradictory. But, in any case, without opposites there is no progression; without antithesis, there is no synthesis. --Elidio La Torre Lagares "Nagari ""

There is something magnetic with the names in "Simone." . . . The condition of strangeness is radicalized. All are equally foreign in this San Juan, the narrator as well as Li. . . . The relationship between the narrator and Li can also be read as an exploration, not without pathos and self-absorption, of the abyss that separates them. If a writer has to be, as we read in the novel, an athlete of defeat, the same requirement would seem to be true for lovers, doomed to run toward a goal that, they know, never arrives on time. --Lucas Mertehikian "Los Inrockuptibles (Argentina) ""

A love story told with a content that is erotic and at the same time social and political. --Ricardo Piglia "El Pais (Spain) ""

A well-told story, where the human condition emerges as the center of the plot: the characteristic miseries, the fears, the anxieties, the need to be recognized/loved/taken into account by the other. --Ana Maria Hernandez G. "El Universal (Venezuela) ""

"Simone" is a clear-eyed vision of the Puerto Rican margins some of them, and not the ones usually found in contemporary fiction, which also makes it all the more effective. Both the literary and the personal are handled well here. . . . It can seem an oddly structured novel, yet it works especially as a whole surprisingly well, and the shifts in Lalo's narrative make for a story that doesn't simply chug along predictably from the outset but expands, in breadth and depth, into an ultimately rich, rewarding work. --M. A. Orthofer "Complete Review ""

A digressive but provocative interlude between several characters that discusses the values of Spanish and Spanish-American literature and highlights the lack of respect for Puerto Rican letters. . . . This is Lalo s only novel translated into English and represents a valiant attempt to capture fame for one of the undeservedly ignored areas of Latin America. . . . The omnipresent San Juan setting . . . symbolizes Puerto Rico as an invisible land just as the protagonist's anonymity symbolizes his invisibility. --Lawrence Olszewski, North Central State College "Library Journal ""

Grounded in a convincing existential weariness and genuine psychological suspense. --John Williams "New York Times ""

"Simone" is reminiscent of Albert Camus s 1942 masterpiece, "The Stranger," a study in alienation and impotence. . . . Certainly a thought-provoking book. The descriptions of Li s abysmal circumstances she lives practically in servitude shed light on an almost unknown aspect of Puerto Rican reality. We are far more used to reading about the plight of Puerto Ricans in New York than about minorities in San Juan. Lalo s dark portrayal of a sunny Caribbean city turns the conventional urban novel on its head, and his characters blistering condemnation of the book industry and the notion of Hispanic unity is bound to raise eyebrows. . . . Lalo s distinct perspectives make Simone a surprising adventure and a worthwhile read. --Barbara Mujica, Georgetown University "Washington Independent Review of Books ""

Eduardo Lalo is a writer, essayist, video artist, and photographer from Puerto Rico. He is the author of ten Spanish-language books, including La Inutilidad, Los Paises Invisibles, and, most recently, El Deseo del Lapiz. David Frye is a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Michigan who translates both Spanish poetry and prose.