Nachrichten an meinen Sohn

Nothing could have prepared him to be a father. The birth of his son shakes up everything he had ever planned. So welcome to a wonderful new life, buzzing with devotion and exhaustion: reading the same children's books over and over, shooting arrows at the rice paper lamps in the living room, the tentative attempts to crawl together, getting to know each other at all, and what does it actually mean to see the world through a child's eyes? Alejandro Zambra maps all of this as best as he can, or what's left of it: as a diary-like account of his own fatherhood, in letters and poems to his son, in the play of his - likely also consciousness-expanding due to sleep deprivation - imagination, as a humorously tender act of self-observation. Messages to My Son is a useful and eye-opening resource for aspiring, debuting, and de facto parents - and for anyone who wants to know what it is like to be a father.