La suma de los ceros
A Zero Sum Game is a biting satire of contemporary consumer society and the cult of the individual, liberally sprinkled with humor and chilling realism.
Rabasa’s clear, steady gaze rests on the sophistry and rationalizations that mask the actual situation where, for all the choices we are offered, we have little power over our destinies. Swift would raise his hat to this debut novelist.
Villa Miserias is a suburb of a suburb where everyone knows their place and nothing ever changes. Every two years, elections are held for the presidency of the residents’ committee, and every two years there are no surprises. But the balance begins to shift with the arrival of Selon Perdumes and his theory of Quietism in Motion. With his alabaster smile, he uncovers the deepest secrets of the unwary residents, and transforms their fantasies in reality with the help of the loans he offers them. Growing rich from money-lending, Perdumes gradually becomes the spectral power behind the community. But when Max Michels, sunk in an obsessive relationship with the beautiful, black-eyed Nelly, and, struggling to silence the multiple dissenting voices in his head, decides to run for president without Perdumes’ permission, the battle lines are drawn.
PRESS
«Rabasa uses various narrative devices to make a rambunctious journey through the layers of corruption and the various faces of power in a housing complex that could be anywhere.» Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture
«Rabasa’s novel is built much like the sprawling housing complex it portrays: a complex but self-contained set of ideas populated by funny and frightening characters. Rabasa has crafted an Orwellian satire of low-level bureaucrats, urban dreamers, and political power.» Publishers Weekly
«With echoes of 1984 and Brave New World, Rabasa delivers a forceful, hysterical debut that’s one for the political ages. This timely novel riffs on challenges that are at the fore globally—drugs, poverty, and class division. This novel is a welcome addition to contemporary Mexican literature, with a voice and intellect that is astute and vibrant, providing much-needed commentary on Mexican-American relations and the abuses of capitalism.» Monica Carter, Foreword Reviews
«Rabasa uses the charged atmosphere to crack dry, wry jokes that manage to lend sympathy to both sides: those in power, who find themselves caught between empowerment and selling out, and those outside of it, who find themselves wanting to be part of a revolution. It’s complex, intense, and would be heavy were the book not so charmingly funny.» Cassidy Foust, Literary Hub
«A very impressive piece of work, in particular also in its creative approach to the concept of ‘political fiction’, and in suggesting what fiction can still do.» M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
«An outstanding political fantasy. Eduardo Rabasa has written a futuristic novel set in the present; its inventiveness is not based on new technologies but rather on new kinds of relationships. It’s a novel about the most complicated of extreme sports: cohabitation.» Juan Villoro, author of The Guilty
«Meticulous, written with a harsh language, this is the portrait of a suffocating microcosm in which hierarchies are fixed by the illusion of a social progress that will never arrive. Rabasa dismantles with precision the mechanisms of a false democracy, in which no political alternative is possible.» Ariane Singer, Le Monde
«This may well be the brilliant novel of our time, a book that captures all of the delusion, deceit, and absurdity of a world given over entirely to the dictates of capitalism. Eduardo Rabasa has written a tragedy, to be sure, a twisted boundary-pushing tragedy that also happens to be insanely funny.» Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
«A critique like this on the potential pitfalls of democracy rings with an eerily relevant timbre.» Gabriel García Ochoa, Harvard Review
«The comparisons to 1984 are inevitable . . . However, Suma de los ceros is closer to A Brave New World than to Orwellian dystopia.» Victor Parkas, El País
«A compelling mix of satirical humor and chilling realism.» Jen Rickard Blair, World Literature Today
«Suma de los ceros carries readers to regions of the imagination which subtly suggest the best of the Central European tradition. The sensation is as real as it is unsettling and, somehow, after a time, gives rise to an awareness of where we actually are. The prose rests firmly on a set of coordinates that can only be Mexican, revealing a totality of truths that reflect the complex texture of a country and a society immersed in a moment of violent convulsion.» Eduardo Lago, author of Call Me Brooklyn
«Rabasa’s satirical vocation is crystallized in a cumulative effect that at times recalls the transversal cut with which Georges Perec sketched the life of the tenants of a building, or the eagle-eye with which Damián Tabarovsky followed the comings and goings of a leaf that glides over a street of Buenos Aires.» Guillermo Núñez, Frente
TRANSLATIONS
Latin America: Ediciones Godot; English: Deep Vellum; France: Piranha
