AUTHOR: Felipe Benítez Pérez
PUBLISHER: Editorial Renacimiento
GENRE: Fiction/Political Satire
READER’S NAME: Katie King
DATE: June 2, 2021
Felipe Benítez Pérez is a well-known and award-winning Spanish author and poet. Any new work he produces should be considered in light of his popularity and influence.This novel, released in November 2020, is already in its third edition. This is his “pandemic” novel, written during the worst months of the Covid-19 outbreak and Spain’s lockdown to battle it, roughly between April and November of 2020.
It’s a satire about a group of “normal” people in Cádiz who in the stress and chaos of the pandemic evolve into hardcore conspiracy theorists. The group includes a militantly celibate tax advisor who is the book’s narrator, a widow who’s a serial religionist, a failed small business owner who aluminum foils his walls to prevent radio waves entering, a provisional government event coordinator (and pothead) who’s on leave for depression, and a high school literature teacher with a PhD.
They meet at a library book club, then recognize a meeting of minds and decide to organize their own conversation club that meets each week at different bars in Cádiz to share a constellation of fantastical theories: The Covid-19 virus is fake, but a virus was created by China in order to sell more masks and gloves. Covid-19 vaccines contain microchips that lodge in the victim’s brain so that “oficialistas”
of a New World Order can remotely euthanize the elderly for being too costly. The officials are led by George Soros and Bill (nicknamed “Villano”) Gates. Mask-wearing is a government scheme to poison wearers with the toxins in their own breath. Each chapter records the discussions with increasingly extreme “facts.” Themes
The narrative mocks the conspiracists relentlessly. But it also shines a light on the thought processes of the club’s members. These are not bad people. They function, more or less, in society. How, then, do they come by the information they proliferate? What makes them believe the ideas that run contrary to facts? Benítez Pérez makes plain the role of social media, but also explores the boundaries of mental health and desire for social acceptance.
An example of “conspiranoid” mental gymnastics comes when they learn that their favorite virus denier, a Cuban-American doctor in Florida with a vast YouTube following, has in fact, contracted the Covid-19 virus, according to the doctor’s wife. Silence reigns temporarily as each member grapples with a new “reality,” then comes up with what they think is a rational explanation, ranging from blackmailers forcing the wife to lie, to the doctor being forced by pharmaceutical companies to lie about being sick. The narrator calls this cognitive filtration. “The imperceptibility of the evident.” That which you can’t see is the most real.
Christopher Buckley’s novel Make Russia Great Again, in which former president Trump hires his hotel hospitality director as his new chief of staff and tasks him with bringing order (which means disorder) to the White House, explores this same territory of unreality declaimed as truth. It’s a hilarious, but terrifying description of contagious self-delusion through double speak.
La conspiración de los conspiranoicos travels a similar path. The club’s passionate and relentless adherence to flagrantly false information seems mad but harmless, probably just like the people who gathered to support Trump near the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Unlike Buckley’s action-packed novel, in Benítez Peréz’s tale the characters mostly just talk. Except for one, who provides a surprise ending that further blurs the line between falsehood and fact, paranoia and trust, madness and common sense.
Style
The writing in this novel is very funny with wordplay, puns and not-so-subtle allusions to real people and events. The pandemic is a pandemonio, political correctness is “politeísmo galopante,” leftist political groups are “neo-moralistas de izquierda” or “neo-socialcomunistas.”
Suitability for translation
This novel will be great fun for a translator to work with. It’s readable, humorous, full of mad but amusing dialog, and many of the puns will be understandable in the original to the English language reader (ie: “politeísmo galopante”).
Transfer to the US market
This is a well-written book with a highly topical theme. The question is how much enthusiasm can be generated for a story about a group of conspiracy theorists chatting in Cadiz bars while in the United States, the conspiranoids are being elected to Congress.
