Brickmakers
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- 119,00 kr
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- 119,00 kr
Publisher Description
Author of International Booker Finalist Not a River
Two young men, Pájaro Tamai and Marciano Miranda, are dying in a deserted amusement park. The story begins almost at its end, just after the two main characters have faced off in a knife fight: the culmination of a rivalry that has pitted them against one another since childhood. The present in Brickmakers is a state of impending death, at moments marked by dream-like visions: Marciano is visited by the ghost of his father, who was murdered when he was a teenager, a father he had sworn to avenge, in a promise he could not keep. Pájaro is also visited, in a recurring nightmare, by his abusive father who disappeared years earlier.
Narrated with fury and passion, reminiscent of William Faulkner or Katherine Anne Porter, Brickmakers is a rural tragedy in the great American tradition, a story of love, honour and violence where everything is at stake. Reprising the powerful imagery and the filmic landscape of The Wind That Lays Waste, and the threatening atmosphere of Dead Girls, Brickmakers is yet another proof of Almada’s extraordinary talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Argentine writer Almada (Dead Girls) unfurls the tense story of a petty feud between two stubborn brickmakers and its rippling effect. Oscar Tamai is charismatic and cruel, while his competitor Elvio Miranda is equally outgoing but kinder. Over mate and cigarettes, their neighbors in La Cruceña spin tales of the men's rivalry, which becomes grounds for investigation when Miranda is violently killed. However, Almada spends less time on the men's story than on a subsequent violent episode involving Tamai's and Miranda's oldest sons, Pajarito and Marciano, respectively, in a scene that bookends the narrative. Almada demonstrates the utter senselessness of their fathers' hatred for each other: "That minor grudge, as time went by, hardened to stone in each boy's heart." The striking translation, particularly of of the final pages, adds sensual detail, leading to an unexpected twist involving Marciano's younger brother, Angelito, and Pajarito, which adds some romance to the tragedy. With its surprises and lyricism, this is a successful riff on a classic Shakespearean tale.
