{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/1646221826?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"1646221826","authors":["Chloe Aridjis"],"book_id":"9781646221820","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/dialogue-with-a-somnambulist-9781646221820","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781646221820.jpg?v=c758039c09419a9e","description":"Renowned internationally for her lyrically unsettling novels, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Chloe Aridjis now offers readers her first collection of shorter works, with an introduction by Tom McCarthy Chloe Aridjis’s stories and essays are known to transport readers into liminal, often dreamlike, realms. In this collection of works, we meet a woman guided only by a plastic bag drifting through the streets of Berlin who discovers a nonsense-named bar that is home to papier-mâché monsters and one glass-encased somnambulist. Floating through space, cosmonauts are confronted not only with wonder and astonishment, but tedium and solitude. And in Mexico City, stray dogs animate public spaces, “infusing them with a noble life force.” In her pen portraits, Aridjis turns her eye to expats and outsiders, including artists and writers such as Leonora Carrington, Mavis Gallant, and Beatrice Hastings. Exploring the complexity of exile and urban alienation, Dialogue with a Somnambulist showcases “the rare writer who reinvents herself in each book” (Garth Greenwell) and who is as imaginatively at home in the short form as in her longer fiction.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9781646221820","publication_date":"20230829","publisher":"Catapult","slug":"dialogue-with-a-somnambulist","subtitle":"Stories, Essays & a Portrait Gallery","title":"Dialogue With a Somnambulist"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.7741,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE005070","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Hispanic American Poetry","score":0.7673,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO022030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place-Based Collections","score":0.7671,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.7741,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"POE005070","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Hispanic American Poetry","score":0.7673,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LCO022030","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Place-Based Collections","score":0.7671,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LCO010000","confidence_band":"high","label":"Essay Collections","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"high","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"},{"bisac_code":"SOC002010","confidence_band":"high","label":"How Cultures Work","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.7741,"slug":"hispanic-american-lit-crit"},{"label":"Hispanic American Poetry","score":0.7673,"slug":"hispanic-american-poetry"},{"label":"Place-Based Collections","score":0.7671,"slug":"place-based-collections"}],"reader_fit":["For readers drawn to liminal, often dreamlike stories and essays"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Saraciea J. 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Stork","Guadalupe Garcia McCall","David Bowles"],"book_id":"9780593204986","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593204986.jpg?v=670dc7d4e9ea4cd9","score":0.6763,"title":"Living Beyond Borders","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593204986"},{"authors":["María DeGuzmán"],"book_id":"9780253001894","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780253001894.jpg?v=83bd4f2b5bffeaf6","score":0.6662,"title":"Buenas Noches, American Culture","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780253001894"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Short Stories","score":0.0216,"slug":"short-story"},{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Book Club","score":0.0215,"slug":"book-club"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Exile, Urban alienation, Solitude.","Themes: Short Stories, Book Club.","Reading lane: Hispanic American Lit Crit and Hispanic American Poetry."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.87,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["For readers drawn to liminal, often dreamlike stories and essays"],"themes":["Exile","Urban alienation","Solitude"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":7,"goodreads_ratings_count":104,"goodreads_reviews_count":17,"quality_score":0.8752}}