Translation Rights TQE / The Immobile Heart

In the spring of 1993 we published El cuarzo rojo de Salamanca the first novel by Luciano G. Egido.  Hardly ever has an opera prima been received with so many praises and has aroused so much enthusiasm among its readers.  Not in vain, a few months later, it was awarded the Miguel Delibes Prize.  Nothing can be more gratifying for a publisher.  And even more so when, two years later, he presented a second novel which, in reality, the author was already writing at the moment he delivered the first one to us.  Not because Egido is a late writer is he a less fecund one... this is undisputable.

One of the most prestigious doctors in the charity hospital of a provincial capital appears murdered one day.  A great stir is caused among the nuns with the white winged bonnets that travel up and down the intricate labyrinth of rooms and corridors, since they cannot comprehend how such a wise and well-loved man could also be so hated.  A policeman and a doctor, a friend of the victim, start an investigation that will lead them to discover four love stories, as intricate as the labyrinth that surrounds them.  Poor Lorquita, a marginal and slightly mad character who is sheltered by the nuns and helps them in their worst tasks, is found guilty. What role could he play in that cross of desires and destinies that illuminates with its defiance a world that denies all possibility of authentic life?

El corazón inmovil (The Immobile Heart) not only establishes Egido as one of the most talented Spanish writers, but also bears witness to his exceptional ability to pass with astonishing nimbleness through very different literary worlds without having to alter his own style.  If El cuarzo rojo de Salamanca referred us to Stendhal, El corazón inmóvil places us in the naturalist universe of Zola, and yet Egido never ceases to be Egido.  In fact, here he continues to explore the essential ambiguity of human behaviour that frees the individual from ideological, moral, and social bondage, making him take possession of his own destiny in order to proclaim his right to happiness.

Luciano G. Egido was born in Salamanca in 1928. After a lifetime’s dedication to the University, literary journalism and the cinema, he published his first novel El cuarzo rojo de Salamanca (The Red Quartz of Salamanca) at the age of 63. With this first novel he won the Miguel Delibes Prize in 1993. With his second, El corazón inmóvil (The Immobile Heart), he obtained the Critics’ Award in 1995. The reader will agree that Egido’s beginnings as a novelist are enviable, and that it would be ridiculous to deny that he is one of the contemporary writers clearly destined for immanent and definitive preeminence.