My Documents (24 page)

She hears the trash collector going by, the men’s shouts, the dog barking, the whisper of canned laughter coming from the headphones, she hears her father’s breathing and her own breathing, and all those sounds don’t alter her feeling of silence—not of peace: of silence. Then she goes to the living room, rolls herself a joint, and smokes it in the darkness.

Alejandro Zambra is a Chilean novelist and poet. He is the author of three novels:
Ways of Going Home, The Private Lives of Trees
, and
Bonsai
, which was awarded Chile’s Literary Critics’ Award for Best Novel. His writing has also appeared in the
New Yorker
, the
Paris Review, Tin House, Harper’s
, and
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
, among other places. In 2010, he was selected as one of the Best of Young Spanish Language Novelists by
Granta
. He currently teaches literature at the Diego Portales University in Santiago.