Author: Javier Pastor
- Fiction
- Random House Grupo Editorial
- ISBN: 9788439730873
Synopsis
Una de las grandes novelas sobre la transición y la historia de una adolescencia al final del franquismo.Fosa común -fosa que alude al lugar del olvido y la injusta arbitrariedad de la memoria- empieza en los años de la transición española con la narración limpia, cercana y divertida de Jaime Arzain, un adolescente en trance de descubrir el amor, el sexo, la amistad, la música o la literatura en una ciudad de provincias castrense mientras el país asiste al desmoronamiento del franquismo, las primeras elecciones constituyentes y los constantes atentados de ETA en un ambiente de miedo, esperanza y desconcierto.
Años después, un Arzain maduro vuelve a esa ciudad enterrada para dialogar con las sombras de su pasado, evocando las ruinas de un mundo perdido y enfrentándose a aquel período de su vida recobrado y defraudado al mismo tiempo, como si toda la experiencia cobrara inesperadamente una naturaleza póstuma.
Unmarked Grave—alluding to a place of oblivion and the unfair capriciousness of memory—starts in the years of Spanish transition with the clean, intimate, and entertaining narration of Jaime Arzain: a teenager in the trance of discovering love, sex, friendship, music, and literature in a military province while the country watches the collapse of Francoism, the first constitutional elections, and the constant attacks by ETA in an environment of fear, hope, and confusion.
Years later, a mature Arzain returns to the buried city to converse with the shadows of his past, recalling the ruins of a lost world and facing that time in his life, at once recovered and disappointed, as if the whole experience would unexpectedly take on a posthumous nature.
Reviews
June 7th, 2016
“In Fosa común (Mass Grave), Pastor’s fourth, long-awaited novel, the author focuses on recent Spanish history, especially the crucial years from the transition to the present day, to present a plot about time, memory and oblivion. In a provincial city with a marked military bent, we are introduced to Jaime Arzain, a teenager witnessing the collapse of everything that had thus far been familiar to him. As well as going through the usual tribulations of adolescence (the discovery of love, sex and friendship), the boy must take in a new landscape of constitutional elections, terrorist attacks and democratic fervour full of hopes and fears for the future. (…) This is a powerful literary volume with a life of its own, confirming Javier Pastor as one of the strangest, most original and extraordinary writers in contemporary Spanish literature.”
Translation by The Spanish Bookstage - www.thespanishbookstage.com
Original source of information La Razón - Diego Gándara
