Chilean Luis López-Aliaga returns to the story with black humor and characters with a Latin American spirit

Luis López-Aliaga, writer, television scriptwriter, director of literary workshops and founding partner of publishing house Montacerdos.

For his new literary launch, the Chilean writer Luis López-Aliaga has once again bet on the short story genre, after a break of just over six years after publishing “Mundo salvaje” in 2017.

Recently, he has returned with “Las furias”, edited by the Banda Propia label, a selection of ten stories on different themes, stories that do not seek sensationalism, much less reveal last-minute surprises, in which the author makes a search for the most intrinsic of life.

The Chilean writer has put his prose to the test in novels, chronicles and short stories; the latter, his favorite genre, with which he debuted in 1995 with “A Question of Astronomy”. Now, in this new title, López-Aliaga presents a collection of stories in which there are no strange or peculiar characters, but instead dedicates most of the time to the particularities of relationships, a different perspective on monotony.

In “Las furias” what can be a symbol of routine is seen from another side and under a different filter; the author establishes, with freedom and astonishment, the search for an image, a form, a story that lasts.

In the pages of this selection, rivers that grow in incomprehensible ways, roars that echo in the forest, skies with shades of red that end up tiring the eyes, winters that keep the streets frosty and crushing heat are present.

Cover of “The Furies” – Luis López-Aliaga (Own Band / 2023).

Luis López-Aliaga takes advantage of his experience in the genre, from “Las furias”, where he has prepared a variety of tones and landscapes as protagonists, all united under the Latin American spectrum. The stories in this book are the result of that feeling of a single identity, despite the thousands of influences of globalization in a modern and hyperconnected world, something that worries López-Aliaga, who in these stories shows the warmth, the tribal and the village.

“The link between the poetry of the eighties and millennial poetry is, by the way, complex, and offers too wide a field of study possibilities. However, this approach refers to the specific link between Lautaro Medina and Herta Montana, a relationship that in its anomaly and consequences shows a diegetic seam that favors a full understanding of the problem” fragment of the story Prologue of Las Furias (Banda Propia, 2023).

In each of the stories, Aliaga goes through moving moments and other concerns, with characters from double bottoms, with impulses that emanate from the darkest and most unfathomable places, where someone can return to take revenge and never return. The author narrates the vicissitudes of a girl with eyebrows, a dog that looks askance, a missing brother or someone in search of the precise shot, and her descent down the side of a mountain, while a camera films her from a distance.

“Cuestion de Astronomia”, the first book of short stories published by Luis López-Aliaga in 1995.

In most of the stories the ideas of fury and revenge are present, not as an obvious act, but as a rope that is slowly stretched. In each of the stories there is a hidden tension. In “Sister”, a young woman looks for her brother who has disappeared, the author makes the reader witness to an unsuspected and suspended reality. In “Prologue” he portrays a decadent literary environment, of poets fighting for their moment of glory.

The also author of the novel “La casa del espia” (2019) presents in “Las furias” a series of texts full of frames and perspectives, from the different points of view with which the Chilean takes up these ten stories. Luis López-Aliaga in this book of stories has thrown everything on the grill and presents himself as a writer on the move who goes through the various narrative times and surprising situations to the rhythm of tireless black humor.

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