Name: Dance for Me When I Die
SKU: 58822356
Price: 4419.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: Alarcón, Cristian ; Caistor, Nick ; López Levy, Marcela
ISBN: 9781478003144

Type

Physical Book

Author

Cristian Alarcón

Translated by

Nick Caistor

Marcela López Levy

Publisher

Duke University Press

Language

English

Pages

144

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

23.4x15.5x2.8 cm

Weight

0.66 kg.

ISBN13

9781478003144

Synopsis "Dance for Me When I Die"

On the morning of February 6, 1999, Buenos Aires police officers shot and killed seventeen-year-old Víctor Manuel Vital, better known as Frente, while he was unarmed, hiding under a table, and trying to surrender. Widely known and respected throughout Buenos Aires's shantytowns for his success as a thief, commitment to a code of honor, and generosity to his community, Frente became a Robin Hood--style legend who, in death, was believed to have the power to make bullets swerve and save gang members from shrapnel. In Dance for Me When I Die--first published in Argentina in 2004 and appearing here in English for the first time--Cristian Alarcón tells the story and legacy of Frente's life and death in the context of the everyday experiences of love and survival, murder and addiction, and crime and courage of those living in the slums. Drawing on interviews with Frente's friends, family, and ex-girlfriends, as well as with local thieves and drug dealers, and having immersed himself in Frente's neighborhood for eighteen months, Alarcón captures the world of the urban poor in all of its complexity and humanity.

Cristian Alarcón

(Author)

View Author's Page

Cristian Alarcón is a writer and journalist. Since the early nineties, he has dedicated himself to investigative journalism and writing chronicles in the newspapers Clarín, Página 12, Crítica de la Argentina and in the magazines TXT, Rolling Stone, and Gatopardo. In his books Cuando me muera quiero que me toquen cumbia (2003) and Si me querés, quereme transa (2010) he merges literature with urban ethnography, turning urgent stories into non-fiction novels. In the book Un mar de castillos peronistas (2013) he writes travel chronicles and profiles of dissenting, subaltern, and marginal characters. In 2012, he founded the magazine Anfibia and the site Cosecha Roja. Since then, he has led a process of permanent mutation of the Latin American chronicle. There, he has experimented with the limits of non-fiction narrative, taking it to a final experience in the Laboratory of Performative Journalism of Revista Anfibia. His most recent inquiries are about the relationship between journalism and art. He was a visiting professor at the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Austin, Texas, and at the University of Lille, France. He has been awarded the Samuel Chavkin Prize, the Konex-Diploma al Mérito Award in the Chronicles and Testimonies category (2014), and the Perfil Award for freedom of expression (2019). He is a full professor at the Faculty of Journalism and Social Communication at the University of La Plata and directs the Master's in Narrative Journalism at the School of Humanities at the National University of San Martín. His books have been translated into English, French, German, and Polish.

See less