Far away, by Hernán Díaz

In the distance
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It is always good to meet daring authors, capable of taking on the task of telling different stories, far beyond the hackneyed labels such as "disruptive" or "innovative."

Hernan Diaz presents this novel with the undeniable freshness of someone who writes something just for the sake of it, with a transgressive intention in substance and form, magically tuning into the strange times we live in.

In the plot, Díaz takes a course between the fabulous and the allegorical, but always interspersed with the crude realism that marks his western scenery, a trip backwards from coast to coast of the United States as an excuse for an adventure full of symbolism.

It seems to me in style to the recent Spanish literary boom Jesus Carrasco. Rich setting favored by the exuberance of details and the sum of almost physical impressions. Only then each one ends up writing with that delicious anarchy of the new storytellers determined to chronicle any time, borrowing the saturated imaginary of our frenetic times.

Håkan Söderström, known as "the Falcon", a young Swedish immigrant who arrives in California in the middle of the Gold Rush, undertakes an impossible pilgrimage in the direction of New York, without speaking the language, in search of his brother Linus, whom he lost when embarked in Europe.

On his bizarre journey, Håkan encounters an insane Irish gold prospector and a toothless woman who dresses him in a velvet coat and buckled shoes. You will meet a visionary naturalist and get hold of a horse named Pingo.

You will be hunted by a sadistic sheriff and a pair of predatory soldiers from the civil war. He will catch animals and search for food in the desert, eventually becoming an outlaw.

He will end up retiring to the mountains to subsist for years as a trapper, in the midst of untamed nature, without seeing anyone or speaking, in a kind of planned destruction that is, at the same time, a rebirth. But his myth will grow and his supposed exploits will turn him into a legend.

You can now buy the novel «A lo Distancia», the book by Hernán Díaz, here:

In the distance
click book
5/5 - (13 votes)

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