The Fallen

Reviews / Votes

'A beautiful and painful novel that demonstrates the power of fiction to pursue the unutterable.'

- Alejandro Zambra, author of Multiple Choice 'The Fallen is the story of a family; not a romanticized saga, but a tale of unconditional love and friendship. Through careful and subtle prose, the strain and suffering in every voice emerges loud and clear. Carlos Manuel Alvarez has painted a powerful, burning image of illness, isolation and harrowing rancour.'

- Laila Obeidat, the London Magazine 'Alvarez does a neat job in this very short but nutritious novel of establishing the personalities of his characters firmly enough that it comes as a real shock when he upends our expectations of how they might behave.'

- Jake Kerridge, the Telegraph 'A war foretold that never takes place. A death foretold that never takes place. And in the middle of this is the inevitable collapse of a family and a country. The Fallen is a subtle, intelligent and profoundly moving novel which sketches, in elegant and thoughtful prose, a rarely seen Cuban landscape.'

- Alia Trabucco Zeran, author of The Remainder 'In chapters which alternate between the perspectives of the four family members, Alvarez slowly and cleverly builds up a picture of a family unit on the brink of collapse.'

- Roger Cox, The Scotsman 'The best in Latin American literature is here: with the precocious skill of someone who is a paragon of narrative resources and sensitivity, Carlos Manuel Alvarez vividly portrays the only identity that really matters: not national, but human. The Fallen is a museum of solitude and of the cracks separating our inner world from the one we live in and from those with whom we coexist.'

- Emiliano Monge, author of Among the Lost