War by Candlelight: Stories

Praise for Daniel Alarcón and War by Candlelight

“Daniel Alarcón’s stories are one of the reasons we go to storytellers — they present worlds we have only imagined or heard about in less truthful and poetic ways. And Mr. Alarcón, like the best storytellers, reveals to us that the world we have secreted in our hearts spins in a bigger universe with other hearts just as good and just as bad as our own. Long before you come to the poignant words, ‘I come see you, but instead meet your absence,’ you will know what I mean.”

— 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.”

— JOE LOYA, author of The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell

“War by Candlelight is beautiful and terrifying: a tour through lands, distant and near, where the difference between violence and intimacy blurs. Daniel Alarcón’s stories are gritty and compassionate, subtle and unflinching. They carry us straight to the front lines of the struggle for physical and psychic survival, where absurdity and tragedy find equal footing.”

— ADAM MANSBACH, author of Angry Black White Boy

“Alarcón’s voice is fierce and assured, and his debut collection engages. Every once in a while a young voice emerges with the potential to define a new generation. Daniel Alarcón fits the profile.”

— Publishers Weekly

“The title refers to personal battles — the fight to find one’s identity in another country, the fight to be recognized by a lover’s family, the fight to live after a soul mate’s death. What results are stories that can take on wonderful new meanings in the imagination of any reader.”

— New York Post

“There is a naked honesty in his debut collection, War by Candlelight, as characters must decide — sometimes at a very early age — who they are…. Alarcón writes with strength and passion. He doesn’t try to reconcile two worlds, but instead holds a looking glass up to each.”

— Charlotte Observer

“In Peruvian American writer Daniel Alarcón’s debut story collection, War by Candlelight, the sights and sounds and tensions of the Peruvian capital come brilliantly alive…. There’s no denying this is a notable debut by a young author whose sharp, observational eye has some gritty knowledge of human hope and foible behind it.”

— Seattle Times

“A collection marked by buried explosiveness…lost love, life-changing decisions, and displacement — Alarcón sometimes has the voice of an old soul. But the author is equally interested in dilemmas faced by his own age group…he is tackling subjects well-beyond his years.”

— Time Out (New York)

“Alarcón shows signs that he’s on the verge of truly accomplished fiction. Alarcón is an enticing escort into a bewildering world where poverty’s strong, democracy’s weak, and politics is inescapable. The [collection’s] appeal lies in a deft use of metaphor and in underscoring the human aspects of politics, beyond ideology.”

— New York Newsday

“Alarcón writes in a flat, almost affectless way, with an easy touch that makes his hard truths and tragic scenes more palatable: his stories can hurt your heart but his artistry is exhilarating…[and] sometimes his spare prose can make you cry.”

— San Francisco magazine

“It is clear that Daniel Alarcón’s stories transcend any label. He moves beyond any designation. The stories are by turns gritty and elegant, startling and stunning. Alarcón may have had an extraordinarily auspicious beginning in his publishing career, but it was by no means a fluke. War by Candlelight attests to this writer’s talents to dangle shadowy visions before us while swooping down to light the way to the next story.”

— San Antonio Express-News

“[Alarcón] is quickly becoming a writer to watch…. The stories are told with unflinching honesty in the face of extraordinary and everyday cruelty.”

— Birmingham News

“The writing is fluid, the vision unwavering. He soars easily from the slightest detail to an abstract notion and just as smoothly back into the heart of the scene. Most inspiring is the promise that he will continue to shower us with frenzied, wonderful stories in the years to come.”

— Pop Matters

“Daniel Alarcón may just be one of the best storytellers writing fiction today. His keen eye and amazing descriptions give the stories the kind of detail often lacking in debut fiction. An extraordinary collection.”

— Bookslut.com

“At an age when most short story writers are in thrall to either Carver-style earnestness or McSweenian irony, Daniel Alarcón is already on another plane. Throughout the book, Alarcón tosses off one casual, beautiful, devastating line after another, announcing the arrival of a Lahiri-like talent to keep an eye on.”

— Ruminator Review

“Stirring. Alarcón’s talent is inarguable.”

— Philadelphia Star

“The color and pathos of Alarcón’s writing reminds readers of Graham Greene, while his spare language sounds like Hemingway — high praise but deserved. Alarcón talks about war in the street and in the heart, powerful subjects served with finesse.”

— Oakland Tribune

“This confident debut collection of short fiction has much to recommend it: Alarcón is a compassionate new voice whose maturity belies his relative youth.”

— Irish Examiner

“The stories in War by Candlelight are wrenching and powerful. Alarcón’s characters never lose their humanity.”

— Baton Rouge Advocate

“Alarcón writes with tremendous humanity and vivid fluidity. His great achievement is to explore the personal consequences of a shrinking world with the same sensitivity and intensity as he considers the established horrors of history.”

— International Herald Tribune

“Alarcón is an urban wordsmith. War by Candlelight is a luminous beginning, crackling with attitude.”

— The Guardian