About the Book
Simón López Trujillo's "mind-blowing" (Gabriela Cabezón Cámara) novel 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.
About the Author :
Simón López Trujillo is a Chilean writer and translator, and author of the novel El vasto territorio (2021), the poetry chapbook Maestranza (2018), and the poem-object 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 Mexico City-based Spanish-to-English translator and poet. Her recent translations include works by authors such as Javier Peñalosa M. and Isabel Zapata. A winner of the 2019 Poems in Translation contest and longlisted for the 2022 National Translation Award in poetry, she has been published in several acclaimed poetry journals across the country.
Review :
"The Last of Us meets The Metamorphosis in Chilean author Simón López Trujillo's newly translated novel, which smuggles trenchant social critique into an eco-thriller about a eucalyptus plantation worker who undergoes a reality-bending transformation after inhaling toxic fungal fumes."--Entertainment Weekly
"Pedro the Vast is a terrifying speculative thriller in the vein of Jeff Vandermeer and Samanta Schweblin, perfect for readers who want to be horrified in the most satisfying way possible."--Chicago Review of Books
"A short novel that simmers and then sears... stunning [and] brilliantly perspective-altering."--Locus Magazine
A Most Anticipated Read from The New York Post, Chicago Review of Books, Reactor, Book Reporter, and more----
"In Pedro the Vast, Simón Trujillo channels the elements of an eco-horror thriller into a spellbinding symphony of otherness. Visionary, disturbing, and at times incredibly sensual, Pedro the Vast confounded my expectations and left me entangled in a feverish world of the mycelial, the alien, and the sublime."
--Ryka Aoki, author of Light From Uncommon Stars
"So unbelievably wild and gorgeous, Pedro the Vast sucked me in completely. The fungus, the voices, the scientist on her quest, the girl with her cats, the footnotes, the language, Pedro himself, his lost son--all of it is riveting. A spectacular read."
--Sierra Greer, author of Annie Bot
"A heady and thrilling sci-fi debut... colorfully satiric...The plot simmers with violence, including fierce sibling rivalry and political turmoil as Chile is engulfed in protests...but Trujillo's careful attention to detail and Myers's smooth translation makes it go down easy."--Publishers Weekly
"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, hypnotizes and haunts."
--Jennifer Croft, translator and author of The Extinction of Irena Rey
"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 Clean
"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 Ghostroots
"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 The Adventures of China Iron
