For August, 2020, the University of Chicago free ebook is
Uselessness by Eduardo Lalo. Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine
We follow our narrator through his romantic and intellectual awakenings in Paris, where he elevates his adopted home over the moribund one he has left behind. But as he falls in and out of love he comes to realize that as a Puerto Rican, he will always be apart. Ending the greatest romance of his life—that with the city of Paris itself—he returns to San Juan and his lifelong task to discover the use (or uselessness) of literature and writing.
“
In this dreamy and succinct novel, Lalo takes readers on an intimate journey of companionship abroad.… Set between glowing, literary Paris, the deceptively dangerous Spanish coast, and various humble San Juan apartments, Uselessness is a novel of modern plight that’s brimming with hope and wisdom.”—Booklist
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