Author: Juan Manuel de Prada
- Fiction
- Destino
- ISBN: 9788423347339
- Release Date: 01-01-2013
-Reviewed by: Félix Lizárraga
Me hallará la muerte (Death Will Find Me) is the most recent novel by Juan Manuel de Prada, a prolific Spanish writer who has received the Planeta and Biblioteca Breve awards (among numerous others), was selected by The New Yorker one of the six most important European authors under the age of 35 in 1998, and who is as notorious for his books as for his controversial political stances.
Were I asked to describe this novel in a nutshell, I would said that it reads like the love child of James M. Cain and Emile Zola: part historical novel, part hardboiled fiction. Set in a particularly somber period of Spanish history, it covers about twelve years in the life of Antonio Expósito, a petty criminal from Madrid who, after his latest ploy to make easy money goes horribly wrong, joins Franco’s Blue Division and goes with the German army to the Siege of Leningrad, where he finds Gabriel Mendoza, an officer from a rich family, who looks uncannily like him. They end up prisoners of war and sent to labor camps, from where only one of them will return to Spain.
Some of the novel’s main plot twists are fairly predictable –you know that the last coup Antonio is planning with Carmen, his partner in crime, is going to backfire; you know that at some point he is going to end impersonating Mendoza; you know that a certain character is going to be his nemesis—but they are artfully achieved, and become imbued by meaning. By the time the identity switch takes place, we are in the very middle of the novel; we have come to know both men (and their moral principles) very well, and the swap itself requires an act of mutilation as brutal as full of symbolism.
The characters are well fleshed out, complex and full of contradictions. The French Soviet commissar Nina, who presents herself as somewhat of a monster, reveals something new and even startling about herself every time she appears; Demetrio, the heroin dealer, is unfailingly charming; even Consuelito, Mendoza’s innocent niece, shows a darker side. As for Antonio, he is somewhat of an homme fatale; however, though his choices become increasingly darker by the page, especially in the second half of the novel, they are never gratuitous, as he desperately clings to the few shreds of humanity he has left in the end. He could have easily said with Macbeth: “I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er...”
The prose is vivid, if more than a little turgid, and the dialog is fluid and rich, although it can become preachy in places, especially when it comes to politics and moral issues like abortion. The historical background gives the whole thing a sense of proportion: after all, Antonio, the turncoat Camacho, or even Demetrio are but small fish compared to Stalin, Hitler, or Franco.
When all it is said and done, Me hallará la muerte is a compelling read, even if the reader does not share the politics of the author, and I strongly suspect that at some point not too far into the future will be made into a highly watchable movie or TV miniseries.
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