The Subsidiary

“Powerful, beautiful, and haunting. Every time I read The Subsidiary, it feels both timeless and painfully, undeniably contemporary.” —Alejandro Zambra  In the subsidiary offices of a major corporation, the power suddenly goes out: the lights switch off; the doors lock; the phone lines go dead. The employees are trapped in total darkness with only cryptic, intermittent announcements over the loud speaker, instructing all personnel to remain at their work stations until further notice. Terrified, one lone worker uses the implements on his desk to give testimony to the horrors that occur during the days he spends trapped in the building, testimony told exclusively --- and hauntingly --- through the stamps he uses to mark corporate documents. Hand-designed by the author with a stamp set he bought in an bookstore in Santiago, Matías Celedón's The Subsidiary is both an exquisite object and a chilling avant-garde tale from one of Chile's rising literary stars.