title: Hotel Juarez: Stories, Rooms and Loops
author:  Daniel Chacon 
description: A master of narrative brevity, Chacn collects several short fictions, from stand-alone koans to connected vignettes, under the apt subtitle, Stories, Rooms and Loops. As in the refractive labyrinths of Borges, Chacn creates parallel characters and perpendicular plots, ensnared in hidden dimensions, twisted and curled up like water snakes, according to one narrator. Chacns many storytellers weave tales of sexual tension and disorientation that play with ethnic and national identities. A young man born in the U.S. to Mexican parents tries to convince a woman in Paris that hes anything but American but admits to the reader, I wasnt sure she would understand what it meant to be a Chicano. I wasnt sure I understood. Another set of linked passages enters the infamous city of Jurez, plagued by ultraviolent homicide and savage drug trafficking. While Chacn spares us the gyring viscera of Roberto Bolaos 2666 (2008), Mexicos unsolved murders haunt a long sequence in which an English instructor risks a visit across the border. Throughout, Chacns prose moves swiftly, doubles back, and echoes itself with tessellated, Alhambra-like layering. --Diego Bez
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  ![image](../Images/cover.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../Images/title.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  **Table of Contents**
  
  
  
  
  
  ___________________
  
  
  
  
  
  [Introduction by Etgar Keret](../Text/intro.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [PART I: ENCOUNTERS](../Text/part1.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Sleeping Mask](../Text/chap1.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  GADI TAUB
  
  
  
  
  
  _Beach Hotels Strip_
  
  
  
  
  
  [Women](../Text/chap2.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  MATAN HERMONI
  
  
  
  
  
  _Basel Street_
  
  
  
  
  
  [The Time-Slip Detective](../Text/chap3.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  LAVIE TIDHAR
  
  
  
  
  
  _Rabin Square_
  
  
  
  
  
  [Slow Cooking](../Text/chap4.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  DEAKLA KEYDAR
  
  
  
  
  
  _Levinsky Park_
  
  
  
  
  
  [PART II: ESTRANGEMENTS](../Text/part2.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  [Clear Recent History](../Text/chap5.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  GON BEN ARI
  
  
  
  
  
  _Magen David Square_
  
  
  
  
  
  [Saïd the Good](../Text/chap6.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  ANTONIO UNGAR
  
  
  
  
  
  _Ajami, Jaffa_
  
  
  
  
  
  [Swirl](../Text/chap7.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  SILJE BEKENG
  
  
  
  
  
  _Rothschild Boulevard_
  
  
  
  
  
  [My Father’s Kingdom](../Text/chap8.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  SHIMON ADAF
  
  
  
  
  
  _Tel Kabir_
  
  
  
  
  
  [Who’s a Good Boy!](../Text/chap9.html)
  
  
  
  
  
  JULIA FERMENT