This is Not Miami

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The fable-like narrative chops between different time periods, a plethora of characters and references to Korean folklore. It is a shame that it took until January of this year to get an English translation, because Whale is an enchanting epic that fully deserves its place on this year’s International Booker Prize shortlist. Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv The reader of this book will encounter relatos that refuse to enter into discourse with History with a capital H. At the heart of these texts is not the incidents themselves, but the impact they had on their witnesses. The stories are based on events that really happened .. but in their subjectiveness they go beyond straightforward testimony, homing in on the transformative experience of their protagonists

Los relatos suceden en Veracruz, muestran la presencia del narco, cómo ha afectado a la ciudadanía, a las prácticas culturales. Una ciudad, un puerto, la ignominia, la injusticia y un par de ojos bien abiertos que saben transformar lo escuchado, lo leído, lo vivido, en unas historias brutales. Tóth is adept at conjuring atmosphere from small details and refined descriptions – the body of an old man, she writes, is “a vacant house, a hollow puppet, who had returned to the dwelling place of the soul”. RomboIn the 1970s, new feminist versions of folklore and fairy tale began to appear in which the silenced female figures at their heart could be seen and reclaimed. These retellings were driven by a conviction that the creativity of these tales could be rescued from their violence. But Melchor is not interested in this. Instead, she frames folklore and fairy tale within contemporary scenes of violence to show the role they continue to play in mediating what is most unbearable. The English title of Laurent Mauvignier’s 2020 novel, The Birthday Party, is surely a conscious reference to Harold Pinter’s 1957 play of the same name, for Mauvignier’s tale is distinctly Pinteresque in its nightmarish plot. From a bestselling migration memoir to an acclaimed novel of suburbia, political poetry and essays and on and on, Salvadoran writers are having a big moment. Fernanda Melchor has a powerful voice, and by powerful I mean unsparing, devastating, the voice of someone who writes with rage and has the skill to pull it off.’ It's hard to understand where this refusal to succumb to despair comes from: these stories depict prison life, poverty, casual cruelties where women kill and mutilate their children, where a rapist is lynched by the family of his victim, a terrifying story of a haunted house - and yet somewhere there is a resistance to simply folding and giving up under the weight of so much misery and desolation.

Few places reverberate so noisily with the ghosts of their history as the English seaside resort,” writes Madeleine Bunting. The country’s coastline is spattered with towns – Felixstowe, Scarborough, Weston-super-Mare, New Brighton – that were once elegant but now include areas of severe deprivation. This year’s International Booker Prize boasts perhaps the most diverse shortlist in its history: its six authors span four continents and two of the books were written in languages that have never been in contention for the prize before. One is Boulder, a compelling Catalan novella that emerged in 2020 and was published in English in August of last year, by the Barcelona-born poet Eva Baltasar, which I wouldn’t bet against to take home the prize. When the story opens, our unnamed narrator is about to board a merchant ship off the coast of Chile. Working as a chef on the voyage, she meets an Icelandic woman, Samsa, and falls in love. Lights in the Sky,” the first relato in the volume, encapsulates this narrative approach. On a trip to Dead Man’s Beach in Veracruz, the nine-year-old Melchor sees strange lights moving fast across the night sky. She interprets these as UFOs, getting caught up in a burst of public fascination with extraterrestrials. The mystery is casually punctured when a family friend observes that the lights are from narco planes. These clandestine flights traffic cocaine into Veracruz, seemingly under the supervision of the Federal Judicial Police.The writing is never ostentatious, never dramatic or 'look at me' even when describing outrageous events (and a shout-out to Sophie Hughes for such a natural translation) but this is powerful stuff. Set in and around the city of Veracruz in Mexico, This Is Not Miami delivers twelve devastating stories that spiral from real events. These cronicás —a genre unique to Latin American writing, blending reportage and fiction—probe the motivations of murderers and misfits, compelling us to understand or even empathise with them. Melchor is like a ventriloquist, using a range of distinctive voices to evoke the smells, sounds and words of this fascinating world that includes mistreated women, damaged families, refugees, prisoners and even a beauty queen. It's honestly a fantastic collection -Melchor is a fantastic writer, one with an ear for dialogue and an eye for detail, both of which lead to her creating incredibly engaging pieces. Almost all of them could have been extended, teased out into longer pieces, and the brevity of some of the articles here might leave many readers wanting more. For me, they were close to perfect. In this book, Bunting circumnavigates the coast, stopping off in some 40 resorts to examine the reasons behind this change of status. As well as talking to the inhabitants she considers the special role seaside towns still hold in the national imagination (63 per cent of the UK’s population lives within 15 kilometres of the sea) and looks for those ghosts of their past. Among the topics she prods at are Brexit, English nationalism and the climate emergency. What makes coastal resorts distinctive, she says, is their “liminality”, a state born of flux, the void of the sea, and their betwixt and betweenness. These are places “of second chances and last chances” and badly in need of the former. Melchor’s Paradais features a criminal group based on the Zetas, but the group is referred to simply as them. No one dares speak their name; everyone knows what that hushed term refers to. Here again are the lies and evasions of grown-ups, but in the novel, there is no Melchor figure to investigate and make sense of the dark shadow cast by them.

In her third book ‘This is not Miami’, Melchor uses the form of ‘crónicas’ - unique to Latin American writing, a blend of reportage, narrative non-fiction using novelistic forms. These short stories, if you will, are all based on fact. At the heart of these texts is not the incidents themselves, but the impact they had on their witnesses. The stories are based on events that really happened.' El horror está presente, un horror real, que se siente, incluso, en el caso de una de las crónicas, “La casa del estero”, como un soberbio cruce entre el relato de terror sobrenatural y la crónica periodística.Melchor evokes the stories of Flannery O’Connor, or, more recently, Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings. Impressive.’ Melchor does not get to the bottom of every mystery; her skepticism cannot debunk every tale. “The House on El Estero” is a horror story about an inexplicable exorcism. It is framed by Melchor’s partner—her future partner at the time of telling, her ex at the time of writing—relating the story and Melchor interjecting with questions and doubts. The social challenge we face is how we support and value those whose memories are impaired. The challenge we face as individuals is how we relate to loved ones who both are, and aren’t, there. Jauhar experienced grief, frustration and rage as his father became increasingly irrational and volatile. His honest writing makes this a painful but important read for anyone who has lost a friend or relative to Alzheimer’s. In this collection Fernanda Melchor does for Veracruz what David Simon does for Baltimore. Through personal stories she manages to paint a broad picture of crime, addiction, violence, ineffective government and prison life in the city. The last few years have seen a glut of excellent South and Central American fiction being translated into English. Fernanda Melchor, whose novels Hurricane Season and Paradais are two of the most thrillingly visceral translated works to hit English bookshops in recent times, is one of those leading the charge.