This is not the first novel to present the idea of the end of the male sex in humanity. The idea seems to be taking on a sinister literary appeal in recent literature. The latest novel by Naomi Alderman it pointed to that end of man, materialized by evolution itself.
Although there is no need to worry, it is just a strange idea that came to me when I came across these two current novels that address this finalist idea from one level or another. Because the truth is that in the book The end of man, Antonio Mercero, the approach is only a metaphor, a hyperbole to open ourselves to very fashionable approaches nowadays about sexual freedom extended to all areas, also to identity as a person.
Carlos Luna, a policeman, knows that one day it had to happen. Her internal identity is different, and her change to Sofía Luna had already materialized in her mind for years. Despite the arduous task of social awareness, it is never easy to expose your reality when it differs from the mediocrity, even more depending on which circles, places or professions.
But Carlos does. One day he leaves his house to work with his wig, ready to face everything.
Fate then offers him an unexpected respite. When he arrives at the police station, at his homicide squad, everyone is upset with the recent murder of a young man, the son of a well-known writer.
A unique literary cocktail in which we move forward trapped by both sides of the story, the investigation of the case of the dead young man and the adaptation of Sofía to her new status, a unique space in which she will have to live, even with her partner and Ex-lover, as she weathers her transition from fatherhood to motherhood of an adolescent boy, as confused or more than she is.
The approach of this story is certainly unusual, although in the background there is something that unites this detective novel with many others of its kind, that dark side of the investigator, that aspect of detachment from the world that surrounds him, that feeling of exhaustion ..., undoubtedly a link with the most purist of the genre so that the contrast is softened a bit.
You can buy the book The end of man, the first novel by Antonio Mercero, here: