A short life of the author
Daniel Alarcón (b. 20 March 1977) is a Peruvian-American novelist, short story writer, and journalist whose fiction and nonfiction occupy the territory between Latin America and the United States — between Lima and Birmingham, between the Sendero Luminoso insurgency and the immigrant experience of displacement and reinvention. His two novels and two story collections have earned him a MacArthur Fellowship (2014), a Whiting Award, and a reputation as one of the most important Latin American writers working in English. He is also the creator and executive producer of Radio Ambulante — the first Spanish-language narrative journalism podcast on NPR — a project that has become as influential as his fiction in shaping how Latin American stories reach English-speaking audiences.
Life and Career
Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru, and emigrated with his family to Birmingham, Alabama, at the age of three. He grew up bilingual in a Southern city with a small Peruvian community, an experience of cultural displacement that pervades his fiction. He attended Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
War by Candlelight (2005) — his debut story collection — established his dual geography: stories set in Peru (during and after the Sendero Luminoso insurgency of the 1980s and 1990s) and stories set among immigrants in the United States. The Peruvian stories — “City of Clowns,” about a young journalist in Lima whose father has just died, and “War by Candlelight,” about a medical student during a power outage — render the aftermath of political violence through personal, intimate encounters. The American stories capture the loneliness and reinvention of immigrant life. The collection was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Lost City Radio (2007) — his first novel — is set in an unnamed South American country emerging from a civil war (transparently modeled on Peru’s conflict with Sendero Luminoso). Norma, a radio host, runs a program where people call in to search for relatives who disappeared during the war. When a boy arrives from a remote jungle village carrying a list of names, Norma’s own disappeared husband may be among them. The novel’s power lies in its treatment of disappearance as a political condition — not just the physical absence of specific people but the way an entire society learns to live with the knowledge that thousands of its members have simply vanished.
At Night We Walk in Circles (2013) — his second and finest novel — follows Nelson, a young actor in Lima who joins the touring production of The Idiot President, a play by Henry Nuñez, a playwright recently released from prison. The company travels to small towns in the Peruvian highlands, performing the play (which was originally staged during the conflict and led to Henry’s imprisonment) for audiences who may or may not remember its original political context. The novel is narrated retrospectively by a journalist who is investigating what happened on the tour — creating a layered narrative that questions how stories are told, who controls them, and what is lost in the retelling. It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award.
The King Is Always Above the People (2017) — his second story collection — consolidated his range: stories set in Lima, in unnamed Latin American cities, in immigrant communities in the United States, and in the spaces between. “The Provincials” and “The Ballad of Rocky Rontal” are among his finest short works.
Radio Ambulante, which Alarcón founded in 2011, produces narrative journalism in Spanish about Latin American life — stories told with the production values and editorial ambition of This American Life. It became an NPR program and has been praised as one of the most important media projects connecting Latin America to the English-speaking world. Alarcón has described the podcast and his fiction as complementary projects: both are concerned with how stories cross borders.
Alarcón received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2014 — one of the youngest fiction writers to receive the award — in recognition of both his literary and his journalistic work.
Themes and Style
Alarcón writes about displacement, political violence, and the stories people tell to survive — and about what happens when those stories fail. His fiction is set in the aftermath of conflict rather than during it: the wars are over, the dictators are gone, but the damage persists in memory, in silence, and in the gaps between what people say and what they know. His prose is controlled and unshowy, closer to Sebald’s patient accumulation than to García Márquez’s pyrotechnics, though the Latin American literary tradition is always present.
His bilingualism and biculturalism give him a double perspective: he writes about Peru with an insider’s knowledge and an emigrant’s distance, and about the United States with an immigrant’s sharpness of observation.
Critical Standing
Alarcón is one of the most important Peruvian-American writers and one of the most respected Latin American voices in contemporary English-language fiction. The MacArthur Fellowship, the PEN/Faulkner nomination, and Radio Ambulante’s cultural impact have given him a visibility unusual for a literary fiction writer. At Night We Walk in Circles is his masterwork.
Key Works
- War by Candlelight (2005)
- Lost City Radio (2007)
- At Night We Walk in Circles (2013)
- The King Is Always Above the People (2017)
Collecting Alarcón
War by Candlelight (2005, HarperCollins) — first edition brings $15–$30. At Night We Walk in Circles (2013, Riverhead) brings $10–$25. Both are modestly printed.