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I N T R O D U C T I O N you won't find any talking trees or heroic, sombrero-wearing peasants in Alberto Fuguet's fiction. This 33-year-old Chilean author of two novels and a collection of short stories is part of a rising tide of young Latin American writers who have turned against the collective voice of magic realism in favor of personal, realistic, apolitical fiction. When his first novel, "Bad Vibes," was published in Chile in 1991, it caused a minor sensation, selling 35,000 copies and triggering a secondary sales boom for the previously banned "Catcher in the Rye." Just out in the U.S. from St. Martin's, "Bad Vibes" centers on Matias, a 17 year-old with a very American jones for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Matias reads Rolling Stone, loves Holden Caulfield and even though he runs with the cool clique of outsiders within the privileged world of upper-class Santiago youth, he is the embodiment of alienation. "Bad Vibes" is a visceral, energetic read that shatters preconceptions and destroys stereotypes. Like Irvine Welsh kicking down doors for his brash Scottish contemporaries, Alberto Fuguet is leading the charge of Gabriel García Márquez's disgruntled children. Listen up or history will blow by you.
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