Included as one of the Hay Festival's Bogotá39 (the best fiction writers under 40 from across Latin America)Lozano studied and lived in New YorkConnected to the indie press scene—Lozano edits the literary journal Make in Chicago, and is part of NY's Ugly Duckling PresseNovel has a playful, wistful exuberance and is full of allusions—readers who love finding easter eggs in books will love this oneMarketing PlansSocial media campaignGalleys availableCo-op availableAdvance reader copies (print and digital)National media campaignTargeted bookseller mailingSimultaneous eBook launch

Today a dwarf smiled at me.As a girl I thought the electric pencil sharpener was what separated me from adult life. Between the blue plastic pencil sharpener and the electric pencil sharpener – in my father’s office or on the teacher’s desk – stretched the distance between childhood and adult life.At a dinner party when he was twenty-one, Proust was asked some questions. Among them, what his favourite bird was. The swallow, he replied. Proust didn’t invent the questions known as the ‘Proust questionnaire’, but his answers were so good they made the questionnaire famous. Proust responded to the questionnaire on two separate occasions. He was fifteen when he was asked his favourite colour.‘The beauty is not in the colours, but in their harmony,’ he said.At fifteen I still thought the electric pencil sharpener separated me from adult life. If I’d been asked my favourite colour I would have said the colour of my blue pencil sharpener, but Proust’s favourite bird is also my favourite bird.If I could turn into any bird, I’d choose a swallow.Change. Unlearning yourself is more important than knowing yourself.Jonás and I did a crossword together this evening. We made a good team. It was a kind of crossword with lots of blank numbered squares.You had to work out which letter of the alphabet corresponded to each number, and then work out the title, the author and the text underneath. He outlined the three-letter words in red, and I outlined the four-letter words in blue. It was a passage from First Love, about the love between the character’s parents. It took the two of us more than an hour to solve it. Crosswords are a good demonstration of how we function as a couple, in this apartment. A model, on a dwarf scale. His maths PhD came in useful for solving the puzzle. My degree in communication helped me remember the author’s surname. From the surname, we were able to work out the rest of the text thanks to Jonás’ usual methodical approach to things. Significant that the word ‘mother’ appeared so many times. Jonás’ mother died a week before we met and this very day, Sunday, would have been her birthday. Every time Jonás read the word ‘mother’ out loud I felt a pang.Today I saw the dwarf again, the same one who smiled at me in the street a few days ago.This time he was sitting with his back to me, in a little diner. He was checking something on his phone; I think he was reading the news. His feet, the soles of his shoes, weren’t touching the floor, and his knees weren’t bent. Straight, the legs of the dwarf sitting on the plastic chair.Tonight we listened to different versions of ‘Wild is the Wind’ as we lay in bed. Out of David Bowie and Nina Simone, I’d go for Bowie and Jonás would go for Nina Simone.I’ve found my combination: a Scribe notebook for a diary and an Ideal notebook for fiction. This is my married couple. Gemini at last become one. Today is a happy day, a day when I came across some dusty, forgotten Scribe and Ideal notebooks in a stationer’s on Calle Alfonso Reyes.They were the last ones. Scribe and Ideal notebooks are very difficult to find, but Alfonso Reyes’ passion for fictions is reflected in his street. I feel like Alfonso Reyes should intersect with Borges. The two writers would spend the whole time joking around between their streets, but what paranormal phenomena would take place in the stationer’s then?‘The Song of the Notebook’.That’s the title of the poem AlexanderVvedensky wrote in a notebook with a grey cover between 1932 and 1933.The collection of poems is called The Grey Notebook, simply because of the colour of the cover.A concert of trees and bushes.The wind in the branches: the song of the notebook in its original version. Silence. Listen to that song.If Jonás turned into a bird I could ask him to let me fly by his side, like in ‘Wild is the Wind’.I’d like to have dinner with Jonás, but today he won’t be home.‘I’m having dinner with my dad,’ the message says. I called him.We argued on the phone about something stupid. He’s going to spend the night there. I wish I’d never said anything.The dwarf on the block.Today he was wearing a three- piece suit and carrying a tiny cane. In the evening we exchanged glances. I felt a lot like the dwarf, on another scale of life and needing to lean on a tiny cane.