India, Oct. 30 -- "The birth of a child heralds a far-reaching future in which we will not fully participate. Julio Ramon Ribeyro summed it up well: 'The tooth that comes in for them is the one that falls out for us; the inch they grow is the one that we shrink; the lights they acquire are the ones extinguished in us; what they learn, we forget; and the year added for them is the one subtracted for us'," Zambra writes in the initial pages of his book Childish Literature. This is a collection of writing about parenthood and fatherhood. Containing essays he wrote while his son was growing up, and entries from when he was born, this is the author's experiments in writing as a father.

Zambra writes that men show up ill-prepared to be fathers...