Episode 320: Fernando Flores's Dystopian Tale Brother Brontë

Diverse Voices Book Review host Hopeton Hay interviewed Fernando A. Flores, author of the novel Brother Brontë. Set in Texas in 2038, it is a dark tale of a future where books are burned, the libraries are closed, and your neighbor may turn you in for having books. In the interview, Flores said, "...for those of us who have traveled to the valley by car, we've been through Three Rivers many times. And it's frightening because you posit an authoritarian police city-state with people that are coopted by the city-state, with people that resist the city-state, and with people that are just trying to get by, like our protagonist, Naftali, who's just trying to get by. And I say it's, it's a little bit frightening because of, you know, if, if you look at where we are today and where we could be in 13 years...I'm hoping it's not...prescient..."

Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. He is the author of the collections Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas and Valleyesque and the novel Tears of the Trufflepig, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and named a best book of 2019 by Tor.com. His fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, Frieze, Porter House Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas. 
 

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