Born in 1970, Alberto Chimal has created a very original and diverse body of work. It features fiction, drama, and essays, and it has explored themes and interests unusually varied among Mexican writers, from contemporary realism and fantastic fiction to recreations of classical settings and characters.
Recently, Los esclavos (The Slaves, 2009), Chimal’s first novel, has been a surprise hit in Mexico. The book features a realistic, no-holds-barred plot about the use and abuse of power in contemporary societies, as seen through the parallel stories of two couples devoted to sadistic or masochistic relations and it has earned many enthusiastic reviews. Its impact has been stronger as it represents a departure from the fantastic themes of some of Chimal’s best known works.
In 2002, he won the Premio Nacional de Cuento San Luis Potosí (National Short Story Award), the highest recognition bestowed on a short story writer in Mexico. The book commended, Éstos son los días (These Are the Days), was published in 2004, and showcases sixteen stories, from vignettes to novellas, made with many different techniques and structures, but always about ordinary characters who discover, with comic or horrifying consequences, new strangeness and complexity in the world around them, which is our everyday world.
Grey (The Flock), Chimal’s most celebrated story collection, took even further the ideas behind Éstos son los días: published in 2006, this new book featured stories about religious (and especially christian) rituals and icons, treated with a fantastic or humorous slant which accompanied a series of observations about the possibility of the divine and our lack of capacity (or desire) to embrace it. It was considered one of the finest books published in Mexico in 2006 by a number of critics and magazines.
Chimal’s previous work includes Gente del mundo (People of the World, 1998; the third, expanded edition is soon to be published in Spain), which was considered one of the 20 best fiction books published in Spanish language in 1998 by a number of Mexican critics, and El país de los hablistas (Land of the Storytellers, 2001), a collection of “strictly imagined” stories; both are parts of a greater project which will be concluded in an future volume, and pretend to create a world of prodigies not unlike that of the Mahabharata or other classic texts, all the while dealing, in those universal, context-free settings, with problems and obsessions common to every person.
Chimal, who has also been considered the best short story writer of his generation and one of its foremost storytellers, has been featured in several anthologies, including 2008’s Grandes Hits (Greatest Hits), a controversial collection by Tryno Maldonado; the 2000 and 2001 editions of the yearly compilations Los mejores cuentos mexicanos (The Best Mexican Short Stories, published by Planeta-Joaquín Mortiz), in which two of his stories are reprinted along with those of writers like Jorge Volpi, Eduardo Antonio Parra, Guillermo Samperio, José de la Colina and others; Generación del 2000 (Generation of 2000, 2000), Ciudadanos de Ficticia (Citizens of Ficticia, 2001), an international anthology of Spanish and Latin American writers, Nuevas voces de la narrativa mexicana (New Voices of Mexican Fiction, 2003), and two collections in honor of American writers: El hombre en las dos puertas (The Man at Two Doors, 2002), a tribute to Philip K. Dick, and Di algo para romper este silencio (Say Something to Break This Silence, 2005), in honor of Raymond Carver.
Chimal was a resident artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada; his stay, during which he worked on his first novel and on The Flock, was funded by the Programa de Intercambio de Residencias Artísticas México-Canadá of the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (the Mexican ministry of culture).
Since 1993, Chimal teaches literature and creative writing at universities and other institutions. He has contributed with stories, reviews, essays, and poetry translations to Quimera, Letras Libres, El Ángel, La Jornada Semanal, Tierra Adentro, Literal and many other publications.
Chimal, who holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, is currently looking for a literary agent outside his country. He also was recently admitted into the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (Mexico’s National Endowment for Creators), which will support his work in a number of writing projects during the next couple of years. In February 2009 his first novel, Los esclavos (The Slaves) will be published; it is a story about power and extreme relationships in a realistic setting, and it is already highly anticipated.
This site hosts, along with this brief English language information page, a fuller Spanish language version site and the literary blog of Alberto Chimal, featuring reviews, commentaries and a monthly contest. Some text samples are already published and others will be translated and published later on.