The Smoke of Fires and War

Smoke, the new novel by Gabriela Alemán (author of Poso Wells and Family Album), asks what happens to a country and its people after 35 years of terror and dictatorship.

Published in English by City Lights Books, it tells the story of a woman named Gabriela who returns to the Paraguayan capital of Asunción to visit what’s left of a family and a home that once provided her with refuge. Andrei, the family patriarch, now deceased, has left her his journal. Gabriela sequesters herself in the library to slowly read through it. The unanswered, and sometimes forbidden questions haunting that home filled with memories are made palpable: What secrets must be kept in order to survive? And for how long?

Alemán situates the present in an eerie, dreamlike atmosphere saturated by a sense of foreboding. In alternating chapters, the past is revealed as an impossible puzzle, riddled with ellipses and gaps. As characters from the past begin to show up in the present, the novel comes to a close as Gabriela learns the family’s hidden story, set against the backdrop of the country’s troubled history.

Please join Dick Cluster, translator of Smoke, and novelist/poet Achy Obejas to celebrate its publication on Monday, November 3rd, 7pm at Clio's.

Dick Cluster is a writer and translator based in Oakland, California. His original work includes three novels and two books of history, most recently The History of Havana (with Rafael Hernández). Other Cuban writers he has translated include Aida Bahr, Pedro de Jesús, and Abel Prieto. He translated Gabriela Alemán’s two previous City Lights published titles: Poso Wells and Family Album (together with Mary Ellen Fieweger.)

Achy Obejas is the author of the story collection The Tower of the Antilles, a PEN/Faulkner finalist, and the novel Days of Awe, which was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. As a translator, Havana-born Achy has worked with Rita Indiana, Junot Díaz and Megan Maxwell, among others. She currently pens the West Coast renters column for the New York Times. Achy is a recipient of fellowships from USA Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Cintas. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

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