Dialogue with a Somnambulist, Chloe Aridjis
Dialogue with a Somnambulist, Chloe Aridjis
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Dialogue with a Somnambulist
Stories, Essays & A Portrait Gallery

Author: Chloe Aridjis

Narrator: Stacy Gonzalez

Unabridged: 6 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 12/26/2023


Synopsis

Renowned internationally for her lyrically unsettling novels, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Chloe Aridjis now presents her first collection of shorter works, with an introduction by Tom McCarthy

Chloe Aridjis's stories and essays are known to transport readers into liminal, often dreamlike, realms. In this collection of works, we meet a woman guided only by a plastic bag drifting through the streets of Berlin who discovers a nonsense-named bar that is home to papier-mâché monsters and one glass-encased somnambulist. Floating through space, cosmonauts are confronted not only with wonder and astonishment, but tedium and solitude. And in Mexico City, stray dogs animate public spaces, "infusing them with a noble life force." In her pen portraits, Aridjis turns her eye to expats and outsiders, including artists and writers such as Leonora Carrington, Mavis Gallant, and Beatrice Hastings.

Exploring the complexity of exile and urban alienation, Dialogue with a Somnambulist showcases "the rare writer who reinvents herself in each book" (Garth Greenwell) and who is as imaginatively at home in the short form as in her longer fiction.

About Chloe Aridjis

Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican American writer based in London. She is the author of three novels: Book of Clouds, which won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger in France; Asunder, set in London's National Gallery; and Sea Monsters, which was awarded the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Aridjis has written for various art journals and was guest curator of the Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014 and the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer's Award in 2020. Aridjis is a founding member of XR Writers Rebel (writersrebel.com), a group of writers who focus on addressing biodiversity loss and the climate emergency.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ausma on October 30, 2023

Chloe Aridjis’ Dialogue with a Somnambulist is a wonderfully spooky maze of dreams, illusions, and otherworldly nocturnal experiences spread across stories, essays, and musings on art and culture. The collection opens with a bang of a tale about a mysterious speakeasy populated with hipster monsters......more

Goodreads review by Skylar on July 12, 2023

These gorgeous, dreamy fragments (are they short stories? personal essays? critiques?) transported me through time and space. Preoccupied with the scenery of Mexico and Germany, the Baroque, the absurd, exile, loneliness, and creativity, these innovative pieces struck a chord in me that I didn't exp......more

Goodreads review by Justine on October 08, 2023

The pieces in Chloe Aridjis’ Dialogue with a Somnambulist exist in that disorientating realm between waking and sleep, where dreams and nightmares permeate reality, unsettling, yet strangely comforting (or maybe that’s just me). Throughout this collection of stories and essays, Aridjis draws from he......more

Goodreads review by kate on November 04, 2024

really interesting and reminded me that you can and should write various iterations of “the same story” over and over again. most of the stories here are about a woman with insomnia and they all come out in vastly different and beautiful ways!!......more

Goodreads review by Beverly on September 28, 2023

Strong storylines in the essay pieces. I enjoyed them. Aridjis has talent for strong development of her characters and turning slice -of-life into a universal message/theme.......more