Cremation
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An overflowing, mesmeric masterpiece about greed from “one of the most remarkable authors on the Spanish scene” (The Guardian)
Along the Mediterranean coastline of Spain, real-estate developers scramble to transform the once pastoral landscape into tourist resorts, nightclubs, and beachfront properties with lavish bars and pools. The booming post-Franco years have left everything up for grabs. Cremation opens with the death of Matías, a paterfamilias who had rejected all of these changes and whose passing sets off a chain reaction, uncovering a past that had been buried for years, and leading those closest to him to question the paths they’ve chosen.
In a rich mosaic narrative, filled with a hypnotic chorus of voices, Cremation explores the coked-up champagne fizz of luxurious parties shadowed by underworlds of political corruption, prostitution, and ruthless financial speculation. The novel enters that melancholy ouroboros of capitalist greed that led to the financial crash and captures something essential about our values, our choices, and our all too human mistakes. Like William Faulkner or Francis Bacon, Chirbes stares, clear-eyed, into the abyss, and portrays us as we really are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From the late Spanish writer Chirbes (On the Edge) comes a stream-of-consciousness account of a family reckoning with its relationships—both ironclad and frayed—in the wake of a beloved uncle's death. In Misent, a fictional Spanish coastal city, unscrupulous developer Rubén Bertomeu grapples with memories of his late brother, Matias, a former anti-Franco revolutionary philosopher turned small-time farmer. The brothers could not have been more different: Ruben has transformed the once-idyllic city into a wealthy resort town overrun by condominiums. Many of Ruben's own family members, including Matias and Ruben's only daughter, Silvia, take umbrage with the machinations of his exploitation of small landowners, cutting backdoor deals with municipal authorities, and surreptitiously transporting drugs into the area. Spinning the story out from multiple perspectives, including Ruben's 29-year-old second wife; one of Matias's close confidants; and a former underling of Ruben's, Chirbes imbues the characters with passion and intellect. There's no conventional plot, but what emerges is a strong sense of late 20th-century Spanish culture and politics, especially through Ruben: "I'm the sole proprietor of these memories... I preserve it." It adds up to a fascinating look at human interactions.
