Redoubt
A Mononovel
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- €8.99
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- €8.99
Publisher Description
A solitary sentinel stationed at the edge of an endless desert confronts the fragile boundaries of memory, body, and self in this haunting existential meditation.
In Redoubt: A Mononovel, Cecile Pineda constructs an intense psychological portrait of a lone holdout locked inside a concrete dugout on an unnamed frontier. Chained by duty and routine, the narrator observes the shifting sands, measures atmospheric shifts in meticulous logbooks, and scans the horizon for an elusive enemy. When an enigmatic black-bordered letter arrives bearing unsettling photographs, the rigid reality of the outpost begins to fracture.
Structured like a jazz riff and punctuated by multiple definitions of its title, Redoubt interrogates questions of gender, birth, and human consciousness. Pineda weaves a spare, poetic fable where inner voices and suppressed memories clash against external isolation. This visionary work speaks directly to readers of avant-garde fiction, feminist literature, and speculative parables.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a small fortress, in the middle of the desert, a guard keeps watch for the enemy, recording every shift of light and temperature in a meticulous field log. "The days here pass without a mummer," the guard notes, and in his (her?) isolation he (she?) is thrust back upon his (her?) own dreams and doubts. Such is the premise of Pineda's latest "mononovel"-a short, intense work told entirely from the point of view of an ambiguously gendered guard. Fans of Pineda's previous works (Bardo99, Fishlight, Face, etc.) will recognize the author's telescopic focus on the minutia of physical sensation and intangible thought. "I am trying as much as is in my power to write something in contrast to writing about something," Pineda once explained to the Bloomsbury Review. And she deftly conveys the emotions of monotony, anxiety and loneliness her narrator experiences-an accomplishment that actually turns into this book's greatest liability. For in writing monotony and isolation rather than writing "about" monotony and isolation, Pineda creates a book that is monotonous, oppressive and completely unleavened by humor. Fans of Samuel Beckett and Antonin Artaud may not mind the recoil of such sharp aim, but others may decide that this mononovel's theoretical abstractions are far more interesting than its contents.
