Daniel Alarcon

I walked into the recital hall of the King Center not knowing quite what to expect. I had never been to a book reading, or any other type of reading at that. There were a couple of people from the English department that spoke, introducing Daniel Alarcon before he actually came on stage to read from his newest book; Lost City Radio. They pointed out how great of a writer he was, how his book was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, that he received the award for being one of the British journal Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, and the fact that he received the Whiting award in 2004. In Addition he is the Associate Editor for an award-winning monthly magazine, Etiqueta Negra, based in Lima, Peru.
Once they were done with their thanks and introductions, the audience applauded and he got up and walked up to the stage. I was relatively surprised, his hair was pretty big, almost a fro actually, looking as if he had been electrocuted, or maybe had just rolled out of bed, I couldn’t do anything but stare at it for a few minutes. He looked very casual, but not really the laid-back kind of casual, more like a half-assed casual attempt at looking more formal. He was wearing slightly worn-out black Chuck Taylors, and his jeans were tearing a little where they rub against the ground. He was wearing a bright red T-shirt with a hint of obnoxiously bright yellow text peeking out from underneath the orange shirt he was wearing on top. He pulled it all together with a navy blue blazer and a silver band on his pinky. Although it was hard, I did snap myself out of my hypnosis in time to hear him introduce his novel, giving a short background summary and explaining the first portion he was planning to read.
He started reading, a bit awkward and monotonous, but the words he was reading were great. The story of a female radio host and her husband, trying to make it through a city going to shambles, sleep in a bar because it’s unsafe to go home captured me. It was interesting and grasping, and his words were sewn together so gracefully it was amazing.
The second portion that he read was further on in the book as well as in the future. At that point, the radio host, Norma, has lost her husband in the jungle. He studied plants and had gone there to study the natural medicines that people used in the jungle’s villages and had never returned. There were rumors that he had joined the Illegitimate Legion, the rebel group that had by then been defeated. On her radio show, Norma often read off lists of names of people gone missing, lost to the nameless south American city, in an attempt to reunite them with their families. A boy came to the station with a list of names of missing people from his village, and her husband’s name was on the list. Here begins Norma’s search for her husband where the war is over and people are trying to pick up the pieces. It is the first clue to solving the mystery.
The story sounded so great that I bought the book and am actually almost finished with it. Daniel Alarcon is indeed one of the great young American novelists, he combines his Peruvian background with his American one in an attempt to bridge the gaps and open people’s eyes to the differences and wonderful things that Peruvian culture has to offer the world. I think he is an amazing asset to both this country and the world as a whole.