City of Asylum Bookstore at Alphabet City will be holding its January Book Club meeting on Wednesday, January 23 at 6:00 pm. The selected book for this month is the Argentinian classic, Zama by Antonio di Benedetto. First published in 1956, Zama is now universally recognized as one of the masterpieces of modern Argentine and Spanish-language literature. 

Written in a style that is both precise and sumptuous, weirdly archaic and powerfully novel, Zama takes place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and describes the solitary, suspended existence of Don Diego de Zama, a highly placed servant of the Spanish crown. Don Diego’s slow, nightmarish slide into the abyss is not just a tale of one man’s perdition but an exploration of existential, and very American, loneliness.

The City of Asylum Bookstore Book Club meets at Alphabet City, located at 40 West North Avenue. For more information, or to RSVP, email the volunteer book club coordinator, Laura McGaha.