It is a novel of dazzling confinement, where sight is the main character: his sister, his aunt, his nanny all play their own game while allowing Mateo to keep his hope for identity in plotting his own escape. Mateo knows about the outside world for what he sees through the windows. Mateo Solo is a story about a child confined in his own home. His first novel in 1984 was Mateo Solo (Mateo Alone), which began his trilogy known as Primera Vez (First Time). After these early successess, Rosero fled to Europe and lived first in Paris and later in Barcelona. In 1982 he was awarded with the Premio Iberoamericano de Libro de Cuentos Netzahualcóyotl, in Mexico City for his earlier stories, and that same year, a novella under the title Papá es santo y sabio (Dad is holy and wise) won Spain’s Premio Internacional de Novela Breve Valencia. When he was 21, he won Colombia’s Premio Nacional de Cuento del Quindío 1979 (National Short Story Award of Quindío), for his piece Ausentes (The Departed) that was published by Instituto Colombiano de Cultura in the book 17 Cuentos colombianos (17 Colombian Short Stories). He is a Colombian writer and journalist, who reached international acclaim after winning in 2006 the prestigious Tusquets Prize.Įvelio Rosero studied primary school in Colombia’s southern city of Pasto, and high school in Bogotá, where he later attended Universidad Externado de Colombia obtaining a degree in Journalism. Stranger to the Moon is a powerfully brave and distinctive novel by a writer who is arguably Colombia’s greatest living author.Evelio Rosero Diago was born in Bogotá, Colombia, on March 20, 1958. Trained insects and reptiles spy on all the naked-ones, and only the most fortunate reach old age (often by taking up strategic spots near the kitchen and grabbing for the fiercely contested food). Each subsequent section of the book adds further layers to the ritualistic and bizarre social order that its characters inhabit.

A parable of pointed social criticism, with naked humans imprisoned in a house to serve the needs of “the vicious clothed-ones,” the novel describes what ensues when a single “naked-one” privately rebels, risking his own death and that of his fellow prisoners. His magnificent Stranger to the Moon portrays a world that seems to exist outside history and geography, but taps into the dark myths and collective subconscious of his country’s harrowing inequality and violence.

A fantastical novel about power and subservience by the great Evelio Rosero, winner of Colombia’s National Literature PrizeThe writer Evelio Rosero has never been one to shy away from the darker aspects of Colombia’s history and society.

Stranger to the Moon by Evelio Rosero