One Night in Paradise

A Night in Paradise is the new collection by the author of A Manual for Cleaning Women, the great literary rediscovery of recent years.

A few years ago, a collection of stories by a deceased and almost forgotten writer shook the international literary scene. It was A Manual for Cleaning Women, by Lucia Berlin, who shortly after achieved the place her talent had reserved for her and became the favorite writer of critics and readers.

A Night in Paradise, the new anthology of her work, offers the opportunity to continue discovering this extraordinary author. Her unique ability to represent the beauty and pain of daily routines, her extraordinary honesty, her magnetism, the familiarity of her characters, her subtle but overwhelming melancholy, all reappear with great intensity in this indispensable volume prepared by her son, Mark Berlin. With twenty-two stories never before published in Spanish, which include many masterpieces of recent literature, this volume is a new event and a gift for Lucia Berlin's many admirers. As if that were not enough, Eugenia Vásquez Nacarino's superb translation has received the XIV Esther Benítez Translation Award.

Critics have said:
"Reading the twenty-two stories in A Night in Paradise is to peer into their abysses to confirm that there is no precipice that cannot be overcome with words [...]. Unpredictable, impulsive, and warm, these stories are a delight."
Sergi Sánchez, El Periódico

"Compared to names like her compatriots Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and Charles Bukowski - without forgetting the inescapable reference to the great master of the short story, Anton Chekhov - [...], Berlin transmutes ruin into beauty."
Ángela Pérez, El Imparcial

"A collection of twenty-two dazzling autofictions, full of estrangement and mordancy, beauty and disaffection. Authentic flashes in the darkness."
Andrés Rubín de Celis, La Vanguardia

"I don't think I've ever read a woman more intelligent, sensitive, tender, and brave than Lucia Berlin."
José María Guelbenzu, Babelia

"Lucia Berlin spent her life in obscurity. Now she is revered as a literary genius."
Brigit Katz, The New York Times

"Finally, Lucia Berlin's time has come."
Andrea Aguilar, El País

"The twenty-two stories in this second volume display an even more seductive and dazzling autofiction [...]. No deceased author appears more alive in the pages than Berlin: funny, dark, and in love with the world."
Kirkus Review

"It's as if Berlin saw an empty space in literature and decided she was going to fill it."
Michael Robbins, Chicago Tribune

"Some short story writers like Munro, Trevor, or Chekhov stand beside you, gently tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Come, sit down, listen to what I have to say.' Lucia Berlin spins around you, throws you to the ground and puts your face in the mud."
Ruth Franklin, The New York Times Book Review

"Her prose descends from Proust and Chekhov. I've always wondered why the world has taken so long to discover Lucia Berlin."
Elizabeth Geoghegan, The Paris Review