Planes Flying over a Monster Essays

From one of Mexico’s most exciting young writers, a cosmopolitan and candid essay collection exploring life in cities across the world and reflecting on the transformative importance of literature in understanding ourselves

In ten intimate essays, Daniel Saldaña París explores the cities he has lived in, each one home to a new iteration of himself. In Mexico City he’s a young poet eager to prove himself. In Montreal—an opioid addict desperate for relief. In Madrid—a lonely student seeking pleasure in grotesque extremes. These now diverging, now coalescing selves raise questions: Where can we find authenticity? How do we construct the stories that define us? What if our formative memories are closer to fiction than truth? 

Saldaña París turns to literature and film, poetry and philosophy for answers. The result is a hybrid of memoir and criticism, "a sensory work, full of soundscapes, filth, planes, closed spaces, open vastness" (El País).

DANIEL SADLAÑA PARÍS is a Mexican writer based in New York and Mexico City. He is the author of the novels Among Strange Victims and Ramifications. In 2017, he was included on the prestigious Bogotá39 list.

CHRISTINA MACSWEENEY is an award-winning translator of Latin American literature. She has worked with such authors as Valeria Luiselli, Verónica Gerber Bicecci, Julián Herbert, and Jazmina Barrera.

PHILIP K. ZIMMERMAN is a writer and translator from Spanish and German. His work has been presented in Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Guernica, Necessary Fiction, the Berlin International Literature Festival, and the New York International Fringe Festival.