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Rodrigo Blanco Calderón has established himself as one of the great voices of Latin American literature with his debut novel This novel centers on themes of family and orphanhood in order to address the abuse of power by a patrilineage of political figures in Latin America, from Simón Bolívar to Hugo Chávez. The untranslatable title, Simpatía, which means both sympathy and charm, ironically references the qualities these political figures share. In a morally bankrupt society, where all human ties seem to have dissolved, Ulises is like a stray dog picking up scraps of sympathy. Can you really know who you love? What is, in essence, a family? Are abandoned dogs proof of the existence or non-existence of God? Ulises unknowingly embodies these questions, as a pilgrim of affection in a post-love era.
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Rodrigo Blanco Calderón is a writer and editor. He has received various awards for his stories both inside and outside Venezuela. In 2007, he was invited to join the Bogotá39 group, which brings together the best Latin American narrators under thirty-nine years old. In 2013, he was a guest writer at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. In 2014, his story “Emuntorios” was included in Thirteen Crime Stories from Latin America, volume number forty-six of McSweeney's. With his first novel, The Night (Seven Stories Press, 2022), he won the 2016 Paris Rive Gauche Prize, the Critics Award in Venezuela, and the 2019 Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Prize. His story “The Mad People of Paris,” included in his 2022 collection, Sacrifices (Seven Stories Press, 2022), won the O. Henry Prize and was included in The Best Short Stories 2023: The O. Henry Prize Winners, guest edited by Lauren Groff. Daniel Hahn is an award-winning writer, editor, and translator with about a hundred books to his name. He lives in Lewes, England. Noel Hernández González is a writer and translator. Originally from Spain, he lives in Norwich, England.
