Ramifications

Dublin Literary Award (Longlist)

"[S]trange and elegant. . . . París brilliantly explores memory, masculinity, and familial drama in equal measure. The result is an affecting account of arrested development." —Publishers Weekly

"A Dostoyevskian tale set in the Mexico City of today." —Kirkus

"Ramifications grapples with the earnest naivety of one experiencing trauma far too young." —New Statesman

"Saldaña París excels at imbuing his earnest protagonist's effort to write himself free from his memories with levity, which MacSweeney — a highly gifted translator who seems to specialize in voice-driven and tonally complex books — conveys beautifully." —NPR.org

"Saldaña París brilliantly folds this story into itself, deftly dissolving time and reality, while constructing an intricate, intimate origami of heartbreak, dark humor, familial fractures and profound dispossession." —Tanaïs , author of BRIGHT LINES

"Saldaña París is the Mexican Philip Roth." —Ottessa Moshfegh , author of EILEEN

"Daniel Saldaña París knows how to talk about those other tragedies populating daily life: a boring, unwanted marriage; mind-numbing office work; family secrets. He builds on those bricks of tedium a greatly enjoyable and splendidly well-written suburban farce." —Yuri Herrera , author of KINGDOM CONS

"Ramifications is a masterful and devastating fairy tale about the particular loneliness of a child lost in the woods of machismo and social revolts." —Alejandro Zambra , author of BONSÁI and WAYS OF GOING HOME

"A deft examination on the nature of truth." —The Skinny

"Paced like a detective thriller, this slim novel contains hard-boiled meditations on masculinity, personal responsibility and the plasticity of memory." —Seattle Times

"In Daniel Saldaña París’s resonant novel Ramifications, an eventful summer has ripple effects that last decades. . . . a rich, smart, and satisfying rendering of abandonment and loss, whose effects reverberate through time." —Foreword Reviews

"[A] sinister little book suffused with a biting humor and morbid curiosity. " —Uriel Perez, BookPeople

"A captivating novel by one of the most important figures in contemporary Mexican literature." —Morning Star

"the reader is drawn into an almost memoir-like story, interjecting snippets of real-time Mexican history with the dreamlike quality of being stuck within a house." —Sounds & Colours

"When the revelation arrives, it comes as a punch in the guts, one the reader feels as much as the narrator does." —Tony's Reading List

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Praise for Daniel Saldaña París
Eccles Centre and Hay Festival Writers Award Winner

"Brief, brilliantly written, and kissed by a sense of the absurd. . . . Like a much lazier, Mexico City version of Dostoevsky's Underground Man ." —NPR Fresh Air

"Great fun are the jabs at academia, Mexico City and the dusty town where the action, or inaction, moves after Rodrigo meets Marcelo, a Spanish cretin with a Ph.D. in aesthetics. These flameless flaneurs humph and hump, personifying urban malaise." —New York Times Sunday Book Review

"Full of odd twists and surprises. Among the high points are Saldana Paris' exasperated but affectionate paeans to 'the immense, beautiful city' that is Mexico's capital. Though a study of slothfulness and its discontents, a welcome book on which the author has clearly expended energy." —Kirkus

"The novel takes some bizarre turns as Marcelo leads Rodrigo into experiments involving drugs, tequila, hypnosis and more, all in the name of transformation. If the young man's notion of radical change is to take part in his life rather than observe it from afar, he's off to a good start."—New York Times

"Saldana Paris's first novel to be translated Stateside is a leisurely story of slacking off that's nicely conveyed in a sharp, cynical tone. . . . Read this messy, shaggy picaresque for its ample page-by-page pleasures, which include devilishly clever syntax, a charming tendency to digress, and satisfying flashes of Rodrigo and Marcelo getting their act together." —Publishers Weekly

"For all Saldana Paris' sharp wit, Among Strange Victims is about waking up to the world's brighter possibilities." —NPR

"In the evocative latest from Saldaña París (Planes Flying over a Monster), a choreographer’s visionary project shakes a Mexican city out of its collective slumber... Saldaña París executes some spellbinding moves... This smoldering tale is worth a look." —Publishers Weekly

"Daniel Saldaña París’s new novel, The Dance and the Fire, has everything a reader could want: climate dystopia, hysterical dancing, and a long-standing love triangle . . . As the surrounding landscape succumbs, one friend seeks solace in dance. Inspired by German Expressionism and medieval danse macabre, the performance expands into something more intense than any of them anticipated, fracturing boundaries between the present world and the past, between myth and reality." —Vulture

"Poignant and compelling, this lyrical translation of Saldaña París’ depiction of youth foundering into maturity against the backdrop of chaos, hysteria, and destruction is a solid add for all literary collections." —Booklist

"Hallucinatory perception, the ephemeral nature of memory, and the intransience of art all come into play in this triptych of confessions from deepest Mexico. Here, Saldaña París leans less on the tragicomedy of the human condition to craft something a little darker and meaner about damaged people turning their hurt inward." —Kirkus

"This is a mesmerising novel of triangles: romantic, political, and environmental…a must read." —Morning Star

"A kaleidoscopic, erudite, and sweepingly tender novel reminiscent of Sebald, if Sebald was on acid. The Dance and the Fire’s power comes from the ambitious (yet brilliantly compacted) range of its themes—fatherhood, eros, art, judgment, personal and archival aporia—that culminate in a book as capacious, porous, and resonant as history itself." —Ocean Vuong , author of ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS

"An absorbing and alarming chimera of a novel in which past meets present, fantasy meets flesh, and individual malaise collides with the woes of a vast and unraveling society. Saldaña París is a deft and clever storyteller." —C. Pam Zhang , author of LAND OF MILK AND HONEY

"The Dance and the Fire is a wonder, brimming with hypnotic prose, wildly vivid descriptions, and intimately—and intricately—drawn characters. It’s as explosive as a wildfire, yet as precise and graceful as meticulously crafted choreography. All that remains is to dance." —Isaac Fitzgerald , author of DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS

"The Dance and the Fire is exuberantly strange, dark, and comic; an enthralling ode to Cuernavaca and the modern rebirth of medieval choreomania, as well as a prophecy about what happens when the built-up dread of our world on fire begins to seep into the soul. Daniel Saldaña Paris is an extraordinary talent, and his novel feels both urgent and true." —Lauren Groff , author of THE VASTER WILDS

"The Dance and the Fire seems to catch fire on every page, seems to burn with jungle and bromeliads: it is a combustible book that alights with visions and cruelty." —La Repubblica

"Saldaña Paris' prose is subtle, and his intelligence diaphanous. But be aware: the characters and the stories that bring them together are ferocious." —Álvaro Enrigue , author of YOU DREAMED OF EMPIRES

"A stylistic force that, in dialogue with aesthetic and political commitment, elevates it as an imposing work." —Zenda

"The words of The Dance and the Fire creep up on the reader, leaving them feeling slightly unnerved. Humor contrasts with seriousness, although that seriousness, in the end, is all a performance: the fire, at turns hilarious, at turns rabid, of a­ carnival." —Revista de la Universidad de México

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