Like Flies from Afar

by K. Ferrari, Adrian Nathan West (Translator)

Overview

"This novel should come not with blurbs but with a hazardous-material warning: There's bone and gristle here, be ready for that taste in your mouth you can't spit out. First words to last, it's strong stuff." —James Sallis, author of Drive

The first novel to appear in English by the "subway janitor by night, novelist by day," who began his writing career while an undocumented immigrant in the United States, Like Flies from Afar will demonstrate why K. Ferrari is already an award-winning star of international crime fiction. A hardboiled noir thriller, a whodunit, a black comedy, and a filthy catalog of the excesses of wealth, this is a Jim Thompson novel for the globalized world.

Mr. Luis Machi is an unforgettably loathsome and hilarious Argentinian oligarch who made his fortune collaborating with the worst elements of society—parasites, pushers, and secret policemen. He has a cocaine habit, a collection of three hundred ties, ten million dollars in the bank, and a bloody corpse in the trunk of his BMW . . . but as far as the body goes, he's completely innocent. He has no idea who the victim could be, or who among his many, many enemies might be trying to frame him for murder, and he doesn't have much time to find out . . .

The profane and uproarious Like Flies from Afar follows Machi through twenty-four hours of his eventful life—one full day in which to solve this mystery, or at least to make sure he isn't the one to take the fall.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374239947
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	03/24/2020
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

K. Ferrari was born in Buenos Aires in 1972. He is the author of several novels, including Like Flies from Afar, collections of short fiction, and a book of nonfiction. Ferrari works as a janitor for the Buenos Aires metro at the Pasteur-Amia station on line B. In the 1990s, he was deported from the United States, where he and his wife were trying to find work.

Adrian Nathan West is a writer and literary critic based in Spain. He has translated more than twenty books, among them Rainald Goetz’s Insane and Sibylle Lacan’s A Father: Puzzle

Editorial Reviews

Heavy on action and dark humor—fluidly rendered in West's translation from the original Spanish—Like Flies From Afar is for those who like their noir fast, short and nasty.

The New York Times Book Review - David Gordon

★ 01/20/2020

Argentinian author Ferrari, who works as a janitor at a Buenos Aires metro station, makes his English-language debut with an enthralling hard-boiled thriller centering on 24 hours in the life of Argentinian oligarch Luis Machi. After a cocaine-fueled tryst, Machi blows a tire on the drive home. He suspects the three spikes in his tire to be a deliberate act by someone familiar with his routine. On opening the trunk to get out the spare, Machi discovers an unidentifiable dead body handcuffed, with a single gunshot wound to the head. The likely murder weapon, the Glock he keeps in his glove compartment, is missing one bullet. Ferrari tightly crafts an intense, noir narrative crosscutting between Machi’s struggle to dispose of the body and evidence without authorities noticing and vignettes featuring the considerable number of enemies, including bitter employees and jilted family members, who would go to this extreme for retribution. Those looking for a finely honed, pitch-black crime novel will be rewarded. With any luck, the author will soon be able to give up his day job. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Heavy on action and dark humor . . . Like Flies From Afar is for those who like their noir fast, short and nasty." —David Gordon, The New York Times Book Review

"An existential mystery, in which corruption emerges from the inside and the most pressing dangers are those we bring upon ourselves . . . Even as we shudder at the violence, we cannot help but appreciate the ironies . . . What happens when your world blows up, when everything you thought you could count on is revealed to be a reverie?" —David Ulin, The Los Angeles Times

"Argentinian author Ferrari, who works as a janitor at a Buenos Aires metro station, makes his English-language debut with an enthralling hard-boiled thriller centering on 24 hours in the life of Argentinian oligarch Luis Machi . . . Those looking for a finely honed, pitch-black crime novel will be rewarded. With any luck, the author will soon be able to give up his day job." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Adrian Nathan West’s translation captures the grit and the poetry of this existential novel, a hard-hitting neo-noir parable whose dark humor delights as it strikes at the corrupt heart of business as usual in Argentina . . . The resolution of the mystery, a clarification of the whodunnit, is not meant to offer satisfaction. There’s no justice in this tale, just the ceaseless motion of possibilities — and more specters." —Lucas Spiro, The Arts Fuse

"Like Flies from Afar is one of those rare pulp gems that grabs readers by the throat and doesn't let go until the last page . . . This is a profane, funny, and brutal novel that moves forward at breakneck speed . . . A superb read that should be read by all fans of crime fiction. It's also a book that hopefully opens the door to Ferrari in the US. Put him on your radar." —Gabino Iglesias, The Criminal Element

"This amazing mix of crime novel and detective story—think Jim Thompson—is even more of a nightmare—think Kafka—stunning in its power and originality." —David Keymer, Library Journal (starred review)

"A darker shade of absurdist noir featuring an Argentine businessman, as contemptible as he is successful, who finds his life inexplicably falling apart . . . a madcap mixture of Kafka, Bukowski, and Jim Thompson." —Kirkus Reviews

"Ferrari’s English-language debut offers sharp social commentary, pitch-black humor, and a twist on the classic frame-up; his unsympathetic and cluelessly entitled narrator leaves readers with little choice but to align with a killer who leaves bodies in trunks." —Christine Tran, Booklist

"Not only is Like Flies from Afar a tough, perfectly constructed novel, it was written with the understanding that the noir is the new protest novel of the twenty-first century." —Paco Ignacio Taibo II, author of Four Hands

"K. Ferrari is one of the most important voices in the contemporary Argentine crime novel. His unique tone creates characters that are unforgettable—realistic and poetic all at once. Like Flies from Afar is yet another example of his literary mastery." —Claudia Piñeiro, author of Betty Boo and A Crack in the Wall

From the Publisher

2019-12-23
A darker shade of absurdist noir featuring an Argentine businessman, as contemptible as he is successful, who finds his life inexplicably falling apart.

The opening of this short novel finds Mr. Machi in the afterglow of a fellatio-induced, cocaine-driven orgasm, luxuriating in his obscenely opulent success, as he prepares to take a drive. "He doesn't need to wonder what success is, because he can feel it in the potent purr of the accelerator beneath his right foot, in the cushioned upholstery, in the power steering, in the sunlight and the stares of astonishment and envy reflecting off the BMW's gloss finish," writes Ferrari, who works as a subway-station janitor in his native Buenos Aires after having been deported from the United States in the 1990s. This is his first work to be translated into English, and it could pass as a madcap mixture of Kafka, Bukowski, and Jim Thompson. In quick order, the corrupt, politically connected Mr. Machi finds his tire sabotaged and his trunk somehow occupied by a corpse whose face has been mutilated beyond recognition. Then more clues seem to link Mr. Machi himself to the murder. He has no idea who the victim is, who the perpetrator was, or why he has been targeted. The book follows his efforts over one day to dispose of the body and the evidence and to discover the motive and culprits. He "feels there's no bottom to the pit he's fallen into," and his attempts to dig himself out find him falling deeper in. He believes he has no enemies, but as he ponders his predicament, it appears to the reader that pretty much everyone he knows could have wished him ill—his wife and their children, his employees and partners, his rivals. His daughter's boyfriend is a writer who supports himself with menial work (like the author) and has plans to write a detective novel much like this one, in which Mr. Machi would be the protagonist "and terrible things would happen to him."

Though ultimately unsatisfying as a mystery, it works as an existential parable, with a protagonist whose character is destiny.

Kirkus Reviews