Ramifications

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Daniel Saldaña París. Ramifications

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‘Ramifications is a masterful and devastating fairy tale about the particular loneliness of a child lost in the woods of machismo and social revolts.’ Alejandro Zambra

‘Daniel Saldaña París is the Mexican Philip Roth, dare I say, and his novel is both satirical and self-reflective, which is my favorite mode of literary expression. (…) Speaking with him about writing fiction was like talking to a long-lost twin.’ Ottessa Moshfegh

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At around two in the afternoon, my father knocked and, putting his head around my bedroom door, announced that he was going to order pizza. I begged him for a Hawaiian because I knew that, given the exceptional circumstances, he’d give way to almost any of my whims. He agreed to my request with a benevolent nod, and I was pleased, not just because Hawaiian was my favourite pizza but also because my sister hated it. My father was unaware of that; as a rule, he didn’t know much about us.

My sister protested. ‘Mum always orders half and half,’ she complained angrily, and I thought about my frustrated attempts at origami. However hard I tried, I couldn’t manage to fold either the sheets of paper or the leaves of the shrubs exactly down the middle. The middle seemed to be a utopian concept, accessible to the understanding but not applicable to real things. I wondered if it was possible to fold a pizza down the middle, exactly down the middle, and came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t.

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