False War // A Novel

An ambitious, panoptic novel about exile as both condition and state of being by a major young Cuban writer

The characters inFalse Warare ambivalent castaways living lives of deep estrangement from their home country, stranded in an existential no-mans land. Some of them want to leave and cant, others do leave but never quite get anywhere.

In this multivoiced novel, employing a dazzling range of narrative styles from noir to autofiction, Carlos Manuel lvarez brings together the stories of many people from all walks of life through a series of interconnected daisy chains. From Havana to Mexico City to Miami, from New York to Paris to Berlin, whether toiling in a barber shop, roaring in Yankee Stadium, lost in the Louvre, intensely competing in a chess hall in Cuba, plotting a theft, or on a junket for migr dissidents in Berlin, these characters learn that while they may seem to be on the move, in reality they are paralyzed, immersed in a fake war waged with little real passion.

The fractured narrative, filled with extraordinary portraits of ordinary people, reflects the disintegration that comes from being uprooted. At the same time it is full of tenderness, moments of joy and profound release.False Warconfirms Carlos Manuel lvarez as one of the indispensable voices of his generation in Latin American letters.

Carlos Manuel lvarez is the author ofThe TribeandThe Fallen.He has been included inGrantas Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists as well as Bogot39s best Latin American writers under 40. He lives in New York City.

Natasha Wimmer is the translator of nine books by Roberto Bolao, includingThe Savage Detectivesand2666. Her recent translations include Nona FernndezsVoyagerand lvaro EnriguesYou Dreamed of Empires.

What happens when exile becomes style, and style becomes a kind of home?False Waris that question asked with tenderness, fury, and precision.Carlos Fonseca, author ofAustral

The dissidents, migrants, and exiles ofFalse Wartravel the world in search of some kind of refuge, but the cities they arrive in are places of purgatory, allegorical waystations of the permanently displaced, where everyone is an outsider, caught between landfalls, hurrying nowhere: Brightness inside, darkness outsideuntil we crash. This is a timeless and urgent work, in turns lyrical, hardboiled, tender, fragmented. It maps a way forward for the twenty-first century novel.Jeet Thayil, author ofNames of the Women

I was blown away by this novel. Nothing in the story is reducible. Its formal ambition is met by its execution, and the effect is staggering. lvarez is an immense writer, a generational talent, and this, for me, is a generation-defining work.Michael Magee, author ofClose to Home

Human displacement is the storm surge of our century, yet we only hear of the crest. Behind that swell rush the sequels of individual souls on the move, swirling, unravelling, adrift. lvarez reels us into those milieus with such engaging detail we cant help becoming comrades to his fugitives. A brilliant work of enchantingly real voices.DBC Pierre, author ofMeanwhile in Dopamine City

Carlos Manuel lvarez is a tremendously exciting and engaged writer, and his fiction and essays never stray far from the world.Literary Hub

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publish Date: November 04 2025
• Pages: 272
• Language:English
• Type: Paperback
• EAN/UPC: 9781644453636
• Dimensions: 5.25 x 1 x 8.25 inches | 1 pounds
• BISAC Categories: Fiction/Literary, Social & Political Themes-Exiles & Immigrants, World Literature-Latin America, Family Life.