Simpatía - Rodrigo Blanco Calderón a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a

a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from a small wine-growing town

an aspiring writer

Translator: Allison Markin Powell

and his elegiac meditation on death

and the ripple effect of the traumas that stalk our movement

Simpatía - Rodrigo Blanco Calderón a thirty-five-year-old barrelmaker from aSimpatais set in the Venezuela of Nicolas Maduro amid a mass exodus of the intellectual class who have been leaving their pets behind. Ulises Kan, the protagonist and a movie buff, receives a text message from his wife, Paulina, saying she is leaving the country (and him). Ulises is not heartbroken but liberated by Paulinas departure. Two other events end up disrupting his life even further: the return of Nadine, an unrequited love from the past, and