— EDWARD P. JONES, author of the Pulitzer Prize — winning
The Known World
“[T]he most exciting debut in fiction of the year.”
— Colm Tóibín
“Reader beware: each of the slim tales in War by Candlelight starts off innocently enough, but invariably explodes with the fatal power of a grenade or the sudden, magnificent blossoming of a flower. Daniel Alarcón is a storyteller whose wisdom outpaces his youth, and whose talent is already ablaze.”
— ZZ PACKER, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
“American literature, whether in English or Spanish, comprises one rowdy, glorious family (as Borges always knew). Daniel Alarcón writes in English, but he reminds me of the young Vargas Llosa. ‘Beautiful, disgraced Lima’ has a new enamorado for this young century, edgy, vibrant, crackling, smart, emotionally devastating, and soaring.”
— FRANCISCO GOLDMAN, author of The Divine Husband
“[Alarcón’s] fierce, stylish, and intricate stories in War by Candlelight announce a prodigious talent…. His tales, set largely in the hardscrabble world of Lima, build with all power of a Flannery O’Connor story: a gentle enough start, an innocent setting, and before long the reader is adrift in a drama that defies the imagination — with characters that live long after the book is closed.”
— Washington Post Book World
“The sentences are fearless and electric, amplifying the dark joys of the mean streets…. His prose is alive with the seen: the large and dramatic but also the peripheral glimpse, like neighborhood kids lacing up their cheap sneakers…. Daniel Alarcón is a master delineator of place. When he puts us there, when his city becomes our city, the stunner is that everything is instantly recognizable. That’s how we know he has stolen our minds.”
— Dallas Morning News
“However difficult it may be for a person to straddle two cultures, it’s an advantage for a writer — an advantage Alarcón exploits with a technical skill and a maturity of feeling that belie his age…. Like all good short storywriters, he has the gift of compression, of reducing ideas to images. Striking details are what we remember best from War by Candlelight.”
— Los Angeles Times
“[A] raw debut collection filled with dislocated, dutiful souls.”
— Entertainment Weekly
“War by Candlelight is weighty and earnest. There’s no doubting Mr. Alarcón’s seriousness and ambition. He is one to watch.”
— The Economist
“The engaging stories in Daniel Alarcón’s debut collection, War by Candlelight, draw on Peru’s violent history, the plight of Lima’s poor and the hopes of immigrants in New York. They are finely crafted fiction, rich in feelings and images…. The stories are vivid with precise details. There’s a lot of artistry in these stories, and evidence of a belief in the short story as a perfectly adequate form for illuminating the largeness of life.”
— Chicago Tribune
“The twenty-eight-year-old Peruvian American writer serves up a richly detailed nine-story debut on the raw tensions and tender mercies common to war and relationships. The author’s perceptive takes on his homeland’s turbulent past belie his youth.”
— Washington Post
“There is much to admire in Daniel Alarcón’s story collection, War by Candlelight. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in the States, Alarcón writes of his native country with a burning youthful ambition that illuminates and inspires.”
— San Francisco Chronicle
“His prose is sinewy, his rhythm’s terse, his eye’s sharp…. At his best, however, in his Peruvian vignettes, he’s free of the self-consciousness and trendy, mannered ironies of so many young American writers. Most important, he’s got stories you haven’t heard before.”
— Seattle Weekly
“Precise, searing language, and immediately embraceable characters…. Alarcón’s skill with language and his eye for the beautiful tragedy of the human condition are on brilliant display in War by Candlelight. Reported to be at work on a novel, Alarcón has given us all a tantalizing appetizer while we wait for our dinner to arrive.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Alarcón returned to Peru on a Fulbright and now evokes the sorrows and beauty of that ravaged land with a precision and steadiness that stand in inverse proportion to the magnitude of the losses he so powerfully dramatizes…. Alarcón, gifted and perceptive, joins a new wave of incisive literary border-crossers.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Nine diverse stories show this Peruvian American newcomer’s passionate involvement with his material. Whether it’s a deadly landslide, a no-holds-barred neighborhood turf war, or a guerrilla war convulsing a nation, Alarcón jumps right in with a fearlessness that becomes his most striking quality…. A rare combination of technical accomplishment and generous heart.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Each of these nine stories provides a dazzling but brief glimpse of Alarcón’s talent, which is informed by the natural and political upheavals in his native Peru.…Readers will find memorable passages, brutal and lovely, throughout War by Candlelight, as the characters do battle with themselves, each other, and the world.”
— Boston Phoenix
“The Peruvian-born Alarcón writes in a strong, vibrant style, with recognizable characters and realistic situations. The names and places are Hispanic in name only; the stories transcend a sense of place.”
— Library Journal
“It was bound to happen: the great new Latin American voice writes in English. Daniel Alarcón’s surprising and adrenaline-filled short stories not only put him immediately on the map, they turn the damn map upside down.”
— ALBERTO FUGUET, author of The Movies of My Life
“This book is powerful, poetic, and bold. I loved it.”
— CHRIS OFFUTT, author of Out of the Woods
“In Daniel Alarcón’s exquisite world, revolutionaries paint brown dogs black because the revolution needs black dogs; a reporter dressed as a clown rides a bus through the streets of Lima; amid buried towns, children chase after aid packages full of neckties. I was so caught up by these lucid stories that I didn’t have a chance to anticipate their tremendous elegance. One minute you’re riding your bike down the sidewalk in Washington Heights, the next minute, your life has changed forever. Daniel Alarcón is one hell of a writer.”
— LEWIS ROBINSON, author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories
“War by Candlelight is frighteningly unpretentious and direct, as it mines a territory all its own. These stories bare luminous and mundane messages of new worlds with equal aplomb. An inspiring debut.”
— ERNESTO QUIÑONEZ, author of Chango’s Fire and Bodega Dreams
“In War by Candlelight, each story blends with the next so that finally they all seem like plays within one greater play about the natural limits, both personal and historical, of unfair warfare. These stories are knowledgeable and mock sentimentality when they show us how so many occasions in life are merely small rehearsals for death.”