Obra muerta

Night, a sleepless man, a sleeping woman. He abandons himself to images that only blossom between waking and sleeping and feels that "insomnia is a dark animal with eyes as red as embers". One by one his friends from another time file past - an old sailor in the grip of alcohol who edits weather reports, a Japanese student who appears in the middle of the watchful boredom of Francoist Barcelona - with the ghostly presence that memories acquire in the hours before dawn. These characters' difficulties, their often unlikely destinations, allow the reader to ponder the real place that we offer others in our lives. Like a ship sailing with its topsides - that is the part visible above the water, on display, while the underwater hull remains submerged - this magnificent story by José Luis de Juan progresses majestically, suspended between the ...