"A series of dreamy, complex, poignant stories with language that is by turns gauzy-poetic and pinpoint-precise but unfailingly inventive." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The dynamic characters in Kingdom of the Young are searching: for adventure, work, love, absolution, better chances elsewhere. A fanatical child army loses faith in its commander as he ages unforgivably into his thirties. A woman possessed with wanderlust and a small inheritance seeks love among the cave-dwelling Roma in Granada. Traumatized war veterans run local rackets; smarmy bureaucrats rise through the ranks of repressive regimes; civilians attempt to escape the stranglehold of life under dictatorships.

From the honeycombed caves outside the Alhambra to the streets of Havana, from hospital wards to quinceañera parties, these stories—along with the collection's illuminating nonfiction coda—testify to the vast imaginative range of an author who has won a Kafka and a Whiting Award among other literary prizes.

"Ambitious, original, deliciously philosophical. Kingdom of the Young invites comparison to the crônicas of Clarice Lispector and the fabulas of Italo Calvino." —Carolyn Cooke, author of Daughters of the Revolution