Nietzsche on His Balcony
On a hot, insomniac night at the Hotel Metropol, the novelist Carlos Fuentes steps onto his balcony only to find another man on the balcony next door. The other man asks for news of the social strife turning into revolution in the unnamed city below them. He reveals himself as the 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, permitted to revisit earth once a year for 24 hours based on his theory of eternal return. With tenderness and gallows humor, the novelist and the philosopher unflinchingly tell the story of the beginning of the revolution, its triumph, fanaticism, terror, and retrenchment: a story of love, friendship, family, commitment, passion, corruption, betrayal, violence, and hope.
Carlos
Fuentes (1928-2012) was one of the most influential and celebrated
voices in Latin American literature. He was the author of 24 novels,
including Aura, The Death of Artemio Cruz, The Old Gringo and Terra Nostra,
and also wrote numerous plays, short stories, and essays. He received
the 1987 Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's highest literary
honor. Fuentes was born in Panama City, the son of Mexican parents, and
moved to Mexico as a teenager. He served as an ambassador to England and
France, and taught at universities including Harvard, Princeton, Brown
and Columbia.
E. Shaskan Bumas is a the author of the story collection The Prince of Tea in China, a finalist for PEN America West Fiction Book of the Year. He teaches at New Jersey City University.
Alejandro
Branger is a writer and filmmaker. He lives in New York City. He is the
co-translator of Carlos Fuentes's novellas Vlad (Dalkey Archive Press,
2012) and Adam in Eden (Dalkey Archive Press, 2013).
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