In 2007, Álvaro Enrigue was picked up among thousands of Latin American writers as one the Bogota 39, thirty-nine authors under the age of 39 who in the view of the jurors represented the best storytelling in the Americas. After reading Hypothermia you understand why. This collection of short stories and nouvelles—also the first of Enrigue’s books to be translated into English – is a daring exploration of the universal themes of loss, love, and the identity crisis brought upon the individual by the impersonal forces of modernity. The jaded and oversexed narrator of many of those stories is a Mexican intellectual who trespasses several borders— geographically and socially, but also in time: Latin American baroque is key to his unique understanding of art, language and food. Other pieces are astute retellings of factual stories, such of the last North American Native-American or the last speaker of a forgotten European dialect. More of his production is expected to appear in English soon.
