FALSE WAR PB – CARLOS MANUEL ALVAREZ

p The characters in em False War /em are ambivalent castaways living lives of deep estrangement from their home country, stranded in an existential no-man’s land. Some of them want to leave and can’t, others left and never quite finished getting anywhere. In this choral novel, employing a dazzling range of narrative styles from noir to autofiction, Carlos Manuel Alvarez brings together a series of interconnected stories of the perennially displaced. From Havana to Mexico City to Miami, from New York to Paris to Berlin, whether toiling in a barber shop, lost in the Louvre, competing in a chess hall in Cuba, plotting a theft, or on a trip for emigre dissidents, these characters learn that while they may appear to be on the move, in reality they are paralysed, living in permanent stasis. With a fractured narrative that brilliantly reflects the disintegration that comes with uprooting, full of tenderness, disenchantment and melancholy, em False War /em is an extraordinary novel that confirms Carlos Manuel Alvarez as one of the indispensable voices of his generation. /p