Vlad

by Carlos Fuentes, Alejandro Branger (Translator), Ethan Shaskan Bumas (Translator)

Overview

Where, Carlos Fuentes asks, is a modern-day vampire to roost? Why not Mexico City, populated by ten million blood sausages (that is, people), and a police force who won’t mind a few disappearances?

“Vlad” is Vlad the Impaler, of course, whose mythic cruelty was an inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In this sly sequel, Vlad really is undead: dispossessed after centuries of mayhem by Eastern European wars and rampant blood shortages. More than a postmodern riff on “the vampire craze,” Vlad is also an anatomy of the Mexican bourgeoisie, as well as our culture’s ways of dealing with death. For—as in Dracula—Vlad has need of both a lawyer and a real-estate agent in order to establish his new kingdom, and Yves Navarro and his wife Asunción fit the bill nicely. Having recently lost a son, might they not welcome the chance to see their remaining child live forever? More importantly, are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564787804
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	07/18/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	586,822
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

The author of more than a dozen novels and story collections, Carlos
Fuentes is Mexico's most celebrated novelist and critic. He has received numerous honors and awards throughout his lifetime, including the
Miguel de Cervantes Prize and the Latin Literary Prize.
Included among his books are Terra Nostra, Where the Air Is Clear, and Distant Relations.

Alejandro Branger is a writer and filmmaker. He lives in New York City.

Ethan Shaskan Bumas wrote the story collection The Price of Tea in China, which was a finalist for PEN America West Fiction Book of the Year. He teaches at New Jersey City University.

Editorial Reviews

The short novel Vlad…provides ample evidence of Fuentes's powerful abilities…somehow Fuentes refreshes tired tropes. The novel is genuinely scary…Will readers appreciate a novel that pivots between hilarity and fear, insightful characterization and flamboyant fountains of blood? Let's hope so, because Vlad displays the strengths of a great writer's late oeuvre to excellent effect.
—Jeff VanderMeer

The New York Times Book Review

In this short novel, Fuentes (1928–2012) follows the pattern of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but infuses the story with a modern sensibility and vivid imagery: a bedroom filled with eerily identical dolls all dressed in pink; a flock of bats that resemble monstrous winged rats, with “filthy, long, hairy ears.” In place of Stoker’s Jonathan Harker, Fuentes has lawyer Yves Navarro, devoted to his beautiful wife, Asunción, and young daughter, Magdalena. Navarro makes a house call to the title character, a mysterious and wealthy new resident in overcrowded and somewhat lawless Mexico City. When Yves sets out for his appointment one dark and stormy night, the door to Vlad’s elegant new home (procured by Asunción, a real estate agent) is answered by a hunchback servant, and the vampire even uses the classic Dracula line, “I never drink... wine.” Navarro, however, does lose consciousness, and wakes knowing neither where he is nor how he got there. By the time Navarro realizes the danger around him, he’s already in too deep. A deliciously barbed bagatelle from a fiction master, with perhaps a strain of allegory for a world devoured by rapaciousness. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A deliciously barbed bagatelle from a fiction master, with perhaps a strain of allegory for a world devoured by rapaciousness." - Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

10/01/2014
In his last published novel before he died, the iconic Fuentes dabbles in the gothic in a haunting tale of vampires whose hapless victims try to extricate themselves from a nefarious scheme.

Library Journal

VLAD is a modern sequel to the Dracula legend that feels oddly anemic. Written by the legendary Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, the novel seems more like a novella with lots of setup and a plot that ends as quickly as it begins. Robert Fass resists the urge to channel Bela Lugosi, even though the images conjured up resemble him. His deep, rich voice is hypnotic, just like the vampire himself. Fuentes finished the book shortly before his death, and one wonders if he’d planned to delve more deeply into the story of Dracula moving his home to Mexico City in search of fresh prey. Fass's calm, controlled voice adds to the deliberate creepiness of the work. M.S. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2012 - AudioFile