Simpatía

“In his latest novel, Rodrigo Blanco Calderón continues his investigation, initiated in The Night, into what literature can say about the floundering of Venezuela, this time, through the plight of stray dogs and the love they spur in various orphan characters.”

– Jorge Carrión

““Blanco Calderón speaks to us of ‘dogs and men,’ of their struggle for survival, of their pain...and of their hope.”

– Carmen R. Santos, ABC Cultura

“Simpatía is a new example of the lucidity that can illuminate a lost paradise. Rodrigo Blanco Calderón authors a work equally exquisite in content and form.”

– David Jiménez Flores

“While The Night was dark, Simpatía is tremendously luminous. Even when positing paradoxes or, perhaps, precisely to do so. Ulises: dwell on that name. I read this novel in one sitting. The prose is marvellous and full of beautiful images.”

– Karina Sainz Borgo

“The latest novel by the Venezuelan writer Rodrigo Blanco Calderón reestablishes him as one of the most promising contemporary Ibero-American prose writers, and consolidates him as an indisputable figure within the prolific panorama of twenty-first century fiction.”

– Letralia

“In the kinetic latest from Blanco Calderón, a Venezuelan man navigates political and domestic upheaval after the fall of Hugo Chavez. . . The twisty story is chock full of betrayals and intrigue as Ulises faces one hurdle after another in his quest to make good on the inheritance. This page turner has plenty of depth.”

– Publishers Weekly

“My favourite book in translation this month is Rodrigo Blanco Calderón’s Simpatía (Seven Stories Press, translated by Noel González Hernández and Daniel Hahn). Caracas-born Calderón has written an imaginative, riveting tale about the collapse of the progressive political ideology of Chavismo in Venezuela, mixed with the deft story of a lovelorn man who turns his family home into a shelter for abandoned dogs.”

– Martin Chilton, Independent (UK)

“When a man loses his wife, who’s left him and their country behind, he gains an unlikely mission from his father-in-law. Where does love live in people who’ve been wronged? In Hollywood, if there are animals involved, you’d find a man redeemed by their love, but this story is more complex and emotionally resonant than that. As the book opens, our protagonist, Ulises Kan, a part-time teacher and film buff, doesn’t have much going for him, but his country, Venezuela, has seemingly gone off the rails. Here, Blanco Calderón revisits the ongoing political and economic crisis that he used to great effect in his debut, The Night (2022). A silver lining emerges when General Martín Ayala, Ulises’ Bolivar-worshipping father-in-law, dies suddenly, leaving a note for him. “The Apocalypse is nigh. Sadly, I won’t be here to see it. It’s your task to build the ark and put your woman and your animals there and hold for 40 days.” The general’s dying wish was to transform Los Argonautas, his beloved estate, into a home for the stray dogs plaguing the streets of Caracas. With the help of veterinarians Jesús and Mariela Galíndez, who are working through their own grief, and a corrupt lawyer named Aponte, Ulises sets about his task. Things get complicated when Ulises reconnects with an old flame, Nadine, who immediately moves in, bearing secrets. There’s a lot going on here, not least Ulises’ observations about the Christlike nature of dogs and clever insights derived from films like The Godfather. Added to the mix are a fascinating side plot about a century-old caretaker, schemes to steal Los Argonautas, unexpected deaths, and the little-known work by Australian-born novelist Elizabeth von Arnim, which Nadine discovers among the estate’s hidden treasures. An unpredictable fable that counters a nation’s hopelessness with the universal need for meaning and connection.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“The chief merit of this artful novel is the unalloyed enjoyment of a scenario that develops and diverts in unforeseen ways"... [The] writing style has a casual, free-to-roam quality.”

– Declan O’Driscoll, The Irish Times

“An accomplished, winding novel that sings in a translation from Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn..... The history of Venezuela is inextricable from this novel, and Blanco Calderón does an excellent job of demonstrating how autocracy has poisoned the lives of the country’s residents. . . . It’s the writing and translation, however, that make Simpatía such a gorgeous book. . . . Simpatía is a marvel of a novel, one that asks what home means when every possible lodestar has gone dim."”

– Southwest Review