False War

The characters inFalse Warare ambivalent castaways living lives of deep estrangement from their home country, stranded in an existential no-mans land. Some of them want to leave and cant, 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 lvarez 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 migr 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,False Waris an extraordinary novel that confirms Carlos Manuel lvarez as one of the indispensable voices of his generation.