A Perfect Cemetery (Un cementerio perfecto)
Federico Falco, Jennifer Croft (translation)FINALIST OF THE GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ SHORT STORY PRIZE
Childhood does not last long in the Argentine mountains of Córdoba, & adult lives fall apart quickly. In disarming, darkly humorous stories, Federico Falco explores themes of obsessive love, romantic attachment & the strategies we must find to cope with death & painful longing.
In the middle of a blizzard a widow watches the ruin of her late-husband's garden, until suddenly she sees a woman running naked in the falling snow. After telling her parents she is abandoning her Christian faith, a girl becomes infatuated with a Mormon missionary who reminds her of a boy killed in her village years before.
When his family's home is lost, a father desperately offers his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who will take them in. And a town's mayor tries to fulfill his father's dying wish – to design the perfect cemetery.
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‘Perfectly honed.’ —Ñ Magazine, Clarín (Argentina)
‘Extraordinary quality.’—El Mercurio (Chile)
‘One of the most talented Latin American authors.’— El Espectador (Colombia)
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Jennifer Croft won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel Amadou, the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick & the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights. She is also the author of Serpientes y escaleras & Notes on Postcards, as well as the translator of Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula’s August, Pedro Mairal’s The Woman from Uruguay, Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, Sylvia Molloy’s Dislocations, & Sebastián Martínez Daniell’s Two Sherpas. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa & a PhD from Northwestern University.