TALES OF BART

<p>A Parisian café waiter discovers a mysterious package of documents left by a fugitive-like stranger unraveling a kaleidoscope of multilingual wordplay historical intrigue dystopian visions and literary puzzles. Tales of Bart-a nod to Alexander Pushkin's Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin-follows the scandalous exploits of evil translator Fruitvale Bart. Spanning Republic-era Texas 19th-century Russia far-future Atalanta and 1990s Los Angeles each vignette is tied to Bart's provocative translations. Alaniz's novel probes the nature of translation-faithful reproduction or creative reinvention-and explores art colonial legacies postmodern alienation and the horrors of the self in dazzling thought-provoking layers.</p><p></p>