LONGLISTED for the 2017 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
An urgent, essential collection of stories about immigration, broken
dreams, Los Angeles gang members, Latin American families, and other
tales of high stakes journeys, from the MacArthur "genius" and
award-winning author of War by Candlelight and At Night We Walk in
Circles.
Migration. Betrayal. Family secrets. Doomed love. Uncertain futures. In
Daniel Alarcón's hands, these are transformed into deeply human stories
with high stakes. In "The Thousands," people are on the move and forging
new paths; hope and heartbreak abound. A man deals with the fallout of
his blind relatives' mysterious deaths and his father's mental breakdown
and incarceration in "The Bridge." A gang member discovers a way to
forgiveness and redemption through the haze of violence and trauma in
"The Ballad of Rocky Rontal." And in the tour de force novella, "The
Auroras", a man severs himself from his old life and seeks to make a new
one in a new city, only to find himself seduced and controlled by a
powerful woman. Richly drawn, full of unforgettable characters, The
King is Always Above the People reveals experiences both unsettling and
unknown, and yet eerily familiar in this new world.
