Unraveling Utopia: Daniel Alarcón’s At Night We Walk in Circles.
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
The Peruvian American author Daniel Alarcón in his latest novel At Night We Walk In Circles (2013) engages in a multi-layered play of attraction and doom. Nelson, an aspiring playwright in an unnamed South American country trapped by his circumstances, seeks an opportunity by becoming part of his hero Henry Nuñez’s revitalized theater troupe, only to find himself manipulated into posing as the dead son of a grieving demented mother. The novel enthralls the reader to know the final fate of Nelson through a narrative akin to a mystery novel, yet foreshadowing the doomed outcome. The novel’s narrator himself remains an ambiguous element in the text until he is revealed as a journalist in search of a story in Nelson’s life, yet it is slowly disclosed that the story may never see the light of day. The mood of stasis looms in the novel as it deconstructs the utopian dream of a generation to expose a world stripped of idealism and held together with enactment of survival and hope.
