The Private Lives of Trees

The second novel by Zambra unfolds as a bedtime story: a writer tells his stepdaughter a tale that shares the book’s title, planning to end it when her mother comes home from work. The man has also just finished a book about bonsai, a nod to Zambra’s earlier success Bonsái, so the novel reads as somewhat autobiographical. It was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2012.