Invisible Years

Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian writer and screenwriter. He is the author of eight works of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel Affections (Simon & Schuster), which received an English PEN Award and has been translated into twelve languages. Named one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists in 2010, Hasbún’s short stories have appeared in Granta, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. He lives and works in Houston.Lily Meyer is a translator, a critic, and the author of the novels The End of Romance and Short War. She is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso's Little Bird and Ice for Martians, Abraham Jimenez Enoa's The Hidden Island, and Clara Usón's The Shy Assassin.

“The incisive latest from Rodrigo Hasbún (Affections) finds a Bolivian American writer reconnecting with the estranged friend whose abortion as a teen inspired his novel in progress. In chapters alternating from their high-school years in the 1990s to the present day in Houston, Hasbún crafts striking set pieces . . . This one hits hard.” —Publishers Weekly“A formally ambitious novel tracing parallel narratives Bolivia and the U.S., alternating present and possibly fictionalized past . . . As the narrator and his old friend catch up, Hasbún generates tension from the way they refer to events we have yet to read about in the 1990s sections—including hints that something very bad is about to befall those characters. A heady exploration of memory and friendship—and the places where both can fray.” —Kirkus Reviews“If you didn’t know Bolivian literature is one of the finest of our day, you will after reading The Invisible Years. Hasbún has written a fun and tender book about the passing of time and the stories scars are made of, beautifully translated by the great Lily Meyer.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World“Rodrigo Hasbún is a writer who knows how to lead the reader to walk along the ridge between what is true and what is not. Is it possible that the two forty-year-olds who meet in a bar in Houston are the same people who, more than twenty years earlier as teenagers in Bolivia, lived through those shocking, violent days of a March that changed their lives forever? Which life is the most real? The one transposed into memory, the one lived in the present, or the one that becomes a story? The Invisible Years, so tense and aching, places these doubts at the center of the novel.” —Andrea Bajani, author of The Book of Homes“I met Rodrigo Hasbún many years ago at a literary festival in The Hague and he immediately caught my attention. He seemed to me an empathetic, imaginative and intelligent young man, like many writers from Latin America. I read his novels with passion. His prose is lucid, well-constructed, mature, with an obvious ethical and political foundation, but also the paranoid science of connecting the dots. A few years later I met him again by chance on the streets of Brussels, but there is no such thing as a coincidence.” —Mircea Cărtărescu, author of Solenoid“The Invisible Years is a poignant novel with a graceful translation by Lily Meyer, who manages the shifts in tone and syntax between time periods with ease.” —On the Seawall“An engaging, provocative read that provides further evidence of [Hasbun’s] creatively uninhibited approach to narrative.” —Southwest Review“A riveting coming-of-age story that will stay with you. The shifting narrative styles and point-of-views are seamless, leaving you wanting to know what's coming next until the end. Having not read a lot of Latin American fiction, this was a compelling glimpse into the lives of upper-class adolescents in Bolivia!” —David Tran, Politics & Prose