Synopses & Reviews
Three childhood friends reunite to transform Ecuador only to find their idealism has succumbed to the cynicism of their fathers.
Extravagant, absurd, and self-aware, The Revolutionaries Try Again plays out against the lost decade of Ecuador’s austerity and the stymied idealism of three childhood friends — an expat, a bureaucrat, and a playwright — who are as sure about the evils of dictatorship as they are unsure of everything else, including each other.
Review
"Each story's hook is keenly sharpened, pulling you into the center of a tortured psyche. . . . Revelations come through a steady drip of plot tinged with unease, with each story wholly delivered and wholly strange." The Stake
Review
"The style of this book is as ambitious as its territory, moving fluidly from voice to voice, from luminous long sentences to syntactical fragmentation. Cardenas, an Ecuadoran now living in San Francisco, has made the Nabokovian move of claiming adoptive English as his own, and he gives us many beautifully eloquent moments." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"An unhinged novel about three childhood friends contemplating a presidential run against the crooked Ecuadorian president Abdala 'El Loco' Bucaram. This is double-black-diamond high modernism, so do some warm-up stretches before you crack this baby." Shelf Awareness
Review
"Even if Cardenas isn't quite ready to run for office in Ecuador, The Revolutionaries Try Again is a rare book — it's political without drowning in politics, it's innovative without languishing in theatrics, and it also blends the historically accurate with the personal. It's part satire, part social commentary, and 100% a good story with rich, compelling characters." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"This is an original, insubordinate novel, like his grammar, like his syntax, but fabulously, compellingly readable, with endearing characters like Leopoldo's grandma, who would tie a white plastic bag on her head like a wig and perform Macbeth for him at her farm, proclaiming in unintelligible English, 'Blo win, crack you cheek, rage! Blo!'" New York Times Sunday Book Review
About the Author
Mauro Javier Cardenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. Excerpts from his first novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again, have appeared in Conjunctions, the Antioch Review, Guernica, Witness, and BOMB. His interviews and essays on/with Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Javier Marias, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Juan Villoro, and Antonio Lobo Antunes have appeared in Music & Literature, San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, and the Quarterly Conversation.