Earlier versions of some of the texts included here were published in the following magazines, anthologies, and artist books:
“Regresar a La Habana”: Reporte SP, August 2018, and Una pequeña ciudad mexicana en La Habana, various authors, ed. Rubén Gallo, Hypermedia, 2020.
“Planes Flying over a Monster”: Electric Literature, August 2016 (tr. Philip K. Zimmerman), and as “Aviones sobrevolando un monstruo,” El Malpensante, September 2018.
“La orgía nefasta” / “The Madrid Orgy” (tr. Christina MacSweeney), Astra, Issue 2, 2022.
“Historia secreta de mi biblioteca”: text read in the Biblioteca Ampersand on October 17, 2019 (Writers Residency Program at the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires), later published on the Blog de Eterna Cadencia, January 14, 2020, and as “The Secret History of My Library: Essay by Daniel Saldaña París,” at theartsdesk.com, October 14, 2020 (tr. Christina MacSweeney).
“Malcolm Lowry en el supermercado”: Reporte SP, March 2016, and “Malcolm Lowry in the Supermarket,” BOMB, July 2016 (tr. Christina MacSweeney).
“Apuntes para la fetichización del silencio”: Vano Sonoro (vanosonoro.com), August 2018.
I would like to thank Catherine Lacey, Mónica de la Torre, Ottessa Moshfegh, Christina MacSweeney, Philip K. Zimmerman, Harold Muñoz, Dwyer Murphy, Miguel Calderón, Tatiana Bilbao, Luis Felipe Fabre, Rubén Gallo, Juan Carlos Bautista, Pablo Soler Frost, Víctor Jaramillo, Antón Arrufat, Nayeli García, Guadalupe Nettel, Diego Erlan, Valeria Tentoni, Emilio Hinojosa, Jorge Solís Arenazas, and Samuel Rutter for sparking the ideas behind some of these texts (or the earlier ones they are based on), for being their editors or first readers, and for enriching them with their corrections, translations, and suggestions. As always, my gratitude goes to my agent, María Lynch, and everyone at Casanovas & Lynch; and to Kendall Storey and the team at Catapult. I would also like to thank MacDowell, the Omi International Arts Center (now Art Omi), and the Writers Residency Program at the Latin American Art Museum of Buenos Aires, under whose auspices I wrote a number of the texts included here; the Eccles Centre, the Hay Festival, and the British Library, whose support enabled me to spend time reading about Cuernavaca in London; the Spanish Department of Princeton University, which financed my two trips to Havana, and the recovering drug addicts on the island of Montreal.