Planes Flying over a Monster: Essays [Hardcover]

Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize

From one of Mexico’s most exciting young writers, a cosmopolitan and candid essay collection exploring life in cities across the world and reflecting on the transformative importance of literature in understanding ourselves

In ten intimate essays, Daniel Saldaña París explores the cities he has lived in, each one home to a new iteration of himself. In Mexico City he’s a young poet eager to prove himself. In Montreal—an opioid addict desperate for relief. In Madrid—a lonely student seeking pleasure in grotesque extremes. These now diverging, now coalescing selves raise questions: Where can we find authenticity? How do we construct the stories that define us? What if our formative memories are closer to fiction than truth? 

Saldaña París turns to literature and film, poetry and philosophy for answers. The result is a hybrid of memoir and criticism, a sensory work, full of soundscapes, filth, planes, closed spaces, open vastness (El País).Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize
Publishers Weekly, A Best Book of the Year
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
The Millions, A Most Anticipated Book of Summer

A pleasing [...] book that will hold special appeal for writers, who will probably recognize themselves in the lyrical rendering of the tragicomic, formative chaos of a creative person’s 20s . . . The heart of the collection lies in this ability to cartographically render the relationships between the written word and a city . . . The strength of Planes Flying over a Monster is how it renders citiesl3¨