Austral

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In the daylight, the house became more human, and the space took on a texture that before had gone unnoticed. Sonradan aklını yitiren antropolog Karl-Heinz von Mühlfeld’in anlattıklarını dinleyen Yitzhak Abravanel bu duyduklarını kızına, yazar Alicia Abravanel’e aktarır.

He is the author of three novels, Coronel Lágrimas, Museo animal, and Austral all published in Spanish by Anagrama and in English by Restless Books and Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In her manuscript is a series of interconnected accounts of loss, tales that set Julio hurtling on a journey to uncover their true meaning. Austral es una historia de duelo pero también la historia de un retorno: la del narrador a sí mismo, la del protagonista a Latinoamérica. La segunda es la sangrienta represión y casi exterminio de la población indígena, hace unas décadas, en Guatemala, por parte del siniestro general Efraín Ríos Montt.A photo of Wittgenstein shows “the tired eyes of a person who has spent his life chasing an idea to its logical conclusion”. Alicia’s father, Yitzhak Abravanel, with a degree in sociology, translates some chapters of von Mühfeld’s last book, The Impurity of Pureness. You can guess that human appearances in these novels of the classical four elements are rare, or oblique. Austral is a tender and thoughtful exploration of the painful irony of being alive and our attempts to make sense of the past as well as the present.

He put the letter aside and let his attention wander toward the students outside as they welcomed winter. He also abandons language in the sense of leaving the vernacular of the university where he teaches, to open himself to the idioms of the South American land and its surprises, in a lone journey. Y no solamente poesía lírica sino también aquella poesía que habita en las ideas tanto bellas como descabelladas.The last line in the last paragraph in this section, “And he thinks how strange it is to imagine a landscape when you finally have it in front of you” makes us wonder: Should we believe our imagination, our eyes, or both? Pero hay un momento que servidor se pierde con las sorpresivas entradas en escena de personajes que arrastran una biografía y unas experiencias que tenemos que fijar, no sea que al final no sepamos por dónde vamos. Okunması romanın katmanlı oluşu nedeniyle biraz zorlayıcı, ancak gerek konu gerek kurgu o kadar iyi ki başlayınca arkası geliyor.

In 2017, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the top thirty-nine Latin American authors under forty.A treasure map of intertwined experiences, each cleaving its own path through time, the novel is a fascinating investigation into the disappearance of culture and memory and a charting of the furthest limits of what language can do. The acadamic credentials are relevant as this is an unashamedly erudite work, but at the same time a fascinating novel. Incidentalmente, una equivalencia histórica que no es mencionada en la novela es cómo casi en el mismo momento en que la hermana de Nietzsche y su esposo están construyendo Nueva Germania, en Guatemala el presidente Justo Rufino Barrios está expropiando tierras indígenas en la Sierra Madre para ofrecerlas a inmigrantes alemanes que cultivaban café lo cual, como toda historia de desalojo, no se hizo sin violencia. La escritura cuidadísima, precisa, matizada cuando hace falta, atenta siempre a los cambios de tercio de la novela.

In the first page of the book, Julio Gamboa, the main character, is studying the postcard of a black and white photograph.Fonseca includes several photographs of Wittgenstein in his book, as a figure of shared devotion by Abravanel and Gamboa.