October 1977. In a big, old, wooden house on a distant beach, close to
Havana, the Godínez women bolt the doors and windows and get ready for the
arrival of what is supposed to be a devastating hurricane. Different
generations of the family live in the old bungalow, an unexpected inheritance
from Doctor Samuel O. Reefy, whom they had served for years. The old maid
Mamina, who escaped from slavery, Andrea, who keeps to herself after the loss
of some of her children, Colonel Jardinero, the patriarch who takes care of the
animals, Olivero, who has had a past as a hustler, Uncle Mino, who cannot help
being hooked on jazz… and the younger generations, who curse the city and the
beach where they must live and look to the North as the Promised Land. These
lives seem to be on hold, detained and waiting for something to happen
(terrible or beneficial), and yet they are made up of dark tragedies, denials,
and secrets that will become known as the hurricane makes its way. It will be
the young Valeria who, thirty years later, will reconstruct the events of those
October days from her Upper West Side apartment in New York City, while she
watches the snow fall over the Hudson River. She will also remember how her
cousin, a very young and determined Jafet, took advantage of the calmness
before the storm and set out on an old boat, the Mayflower, to escape to the
North.
Like a tragedy sustained by
an absorbing rhythm, like a magnificent evocation of characters that embody
part of a country’s history, El navegante dormido closes the cycle of
three novels by one of the most original narrators in Spanish narrative.
About Tuyo es el reino
“A hugely ambitious effusion of magical realist mythmaking.”
Jon Gareick, The New York Times
“Enticing literary gamesmanship from a remarkably accomplished new
novelist.”
Kirkus Review
“A debut novel that opens up new literary paths, as did Paradiso and One
Hundred Years of Solitude.”
Robert Saladrigas, La Vanguardia
“A verbal cataclysm, a magnificent earthquake, a literary epiphany.”
Miguel García-Posada, El País
“A clear abundance of faculties. It reveals both the firmness and
looseness of a tale of impressing strength without hesitation, with complete
control and confidence.”
Santos Sanz-Villanueva, El Mundo
About Los palacios distantes
“A profoundly subversive novel. The Tyrant is immortal, but so is man’s
capacity to build distant and fantastic palaces, hidden from reality,
especially when a writer can becomes the excellent architect of his re-found
paradise.”
Raphaël
Rérolle, Le Monde
“A desolate and beautiful work, full of radical poetry, that once again
proves the talent of one of the best Latin American writers alive.”
Miguel García-Posada, Abc
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