A Father Is Born

The moving story of a man relearning his entire world and words, written by the winner of the Alfaguara Prize.

“It’s not vertigo: it’s a child.”

A father, a mother, a child: three different characters in a universal story, told in newly born words. A minimalist chronicle of a simultaneous gestation, resonating both on intimate and collective levels, this book belongs to a rare genre of love literature: that which an astonished father writes for his son. Its pages explore the enigma of those essential learnings that we will never remember: arriving to the world, starting to walk, to speak, to form our identity and organize our memory. Its luminous voice pays tribute to early childhood and to language itself.

A Father is Born begins by delving deep into the pre-natal experience–traditionally foreign to men–from the wonderstruck perspective of a father who reflects on his own gendered education. Continuing with the newborn’s arrival and the discoveries prompted by caring for, observing, and getting to know him, our narrator then recounts the period when words make their powerful appearance and the child begins speaking. This moving story deals with the relationship between a man and his infant son, both before and after the burst of verbal language, revealing the mysterious link between grammar and emotions.

In a time that redines tradionally attributed roles, A Father is Born accepts the poet Anne Waldman’s invitation: “Tell the man to give up tumult for the while / to wonder at the sight of baby’s beauty.” In a radically synthetic style, striking a delicate balance between narrative and poetic prose, Andrés Neuman offers us his most intimate work.