Author: Agustín Fernández Mallo
Translator: Thomas Bunstead
Publisher: Fitzcarraldo
Paperback
Staff Picks: Sam says…
This is a book of traces. A novel that probes at how, in the 21st century, the field is flooded by the interconnected remnants of our lives and those who came before us.
It takes the form of three novellas, each of which tells a story which is haunted by, but not directly implicated in, one of the major wars of the last century: the Spanish Civil War, WW2 and the Vietnam War.
I could try and summarize what happens, but that would miss the point of why I loved this book. Like Bolaño, or DeLillo in the 80s, Fernandez Mallo dissects the causal links which form the basis of the assumptions under which we live our lives. It's a long time since I read something that so thoroughly rearranged the furniture of my brain. Buyer beware!