Emilio, los chistes y la muerte

This is the story of the relationship between a twelve-year old boy who remembers too much and a woman of forty who would like to forget everything. Emilio, who has no friends nor brothers and sisters, and Eurídice, a masseuse who has just lost her only child, meet up almost secretly in an enormous, unkempt cemetery, where the names of the dead have been made imperceptible with age and the gravestones are at risk from being swallowed up by the shrubbery. Though her desperation and his precocious maturity, through the spells cast by their own names and the potent call of sex, emerges a simple truth: no one is master of anybody. A truth accompanied by another: desire is ageless, as are the dominator and the dominated. Desire, like the names of the dead, is a surly, uncontrollable and sometimes redeeming force. This is a novel that focuses on the sexual conflicts of its protagonists and subverts the classic format of the ‘coming of age’ novel, becoming a bittersweet reflection of the impossibility of ever truly knowing the other. Brief, precise, unadorned, the plot develops rapidly, exploring light and darkness, fresh air, jokes and death. Fabio Morábito, once wrote Sergio Pitol: «Has, since the beginning of his literary career, revealed himself as a ‘strange’ user of language. His words appear transparent and precise, serving him as a spell, a gift, a wink to his readers. But underneath, there is raging lava, a knot of questions and metaphysical hypotheses”. Now, after his celebrated poetry, stories and essays, comes his long-awaited and excellent first novel.