Andrés Neuman's literature plays with confusion. From his novels we are offered detailed glimpses of characters and situations that make up one of those rich mosaics that would already have enough hook. But in many of his narrative proposals the question is when things happen or under what circumstances his protagonists appear. Existentialism in essence, realism with tact to approach any historical moment.
Because without a doubt there is an interest in transcendence, in the message to be extracted from our passage through the world. Because we obtain nothing relevant by searching in official archives or chronicles. All that should remain of our civilization is a novel about seemingly irrelevant lives. How irrelevant was the way the protomen hunted mammoths.
That is the fresco so that future generations can faithfully observe the existence of humanity. Better literature than history of wars, violence, desire for power, ambitions and other drives and movements that shaped and shape our world. To echo Andrés Neuman's proposals is to enjoy what should remain of us.
Top 3 recommended novels by Andrés Neuman
umbilical
Paternity is an act of faith with the future, an awareness and an assumption of responsibilities that start from the genetic desire for a cell division into two precise halves, that of the father and that of the son. The umbilical cord of parents and children remain linked from reason and emotions linked by a will towards the impossible mortality.
A man awaits the birth of his son. Fascinated, he attends the gestation together with the mother, he imagines that being who will come to revolutionize his house, his language, his partner and his own family history. Throughout a memorable year, the man narrates the first bars of a new existence: his as a father together with his mother and son, three characters in a universal story that finds newly born words.
umbilical it is a lyrical story whose searches resonate both in the intimate plane and in the collective. His reflections on the experience of fatherhood place masculinity in the face of the miracle of life and its incessant rereading of the present, in a time of redefinition of roles, thus accepting the invitation of the poet Anne Waldman who heads these pages: «That men stop your fuss / in front of the wonder of the baby». But it is also, and above all, a declaration of love.
The traveler of the century
There is something strange in those recent and unattainable times of the modern era. The nineteenth century and the first twentieth century pointed to a world facing the opportunity, the dilemma, the final course to be taken by all humanity. From that notion this story was written, which in the end remains with the most transcendental of all, the rabid sensation of the human that resides in the anecdotal, disrupting everything.
When the traveler is about to leave, an unusual character stops him, changing his destiny forever. The rest will be love and literature: a memorable love that will shake beds and books alike; and an imaginary world that will condense, on a small scale, the conflicts of modern Europe.
Andrés Neuman displays a cultural mosaic at the service of an intense plot, full of intrigue, humor and exciting characters, with a groundbreaking style that offers these questions a surprising channel.
Fracture
Every relevant transition in the history of our planet occurs from the fracture. It could have been climatic changes or asteroids with their final trajectories... In our case, as far as we are strictly concerned as humans, those fractures are already up to us. That there is an earthquake involved is just chance, metaphor or, why not, a roar of self-defense from the Earth….
Mr. Watanabe, a survivor of the atomic bomb, feels like a fugitive from his own memory and is about to make one of the most crucial decisions of his life. The earthquake prior to the Fukushima accident causes a movement of plates that stirs up the collective past.
Four women narrate their lives and their memories of Watanabe to an enigmatic Argentine journalist, in a sentimental and political journey through cities such as Tokyo, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires or Madrid. This crossing of languages, countries and couples reveals how nothing happens in one place, how each event expands until the antipodes tremble. The way in which societies remember and, above all, forget.
En Fracture love and humor, history and energy, the beauty that emerges from broken things are interwoven. With this novel, Andrés Neuman returns strongly to the long-term narrative, which established him internationally with the traveler of the century, and signs his major work.
Other recommended books by Andrés Neuman
little talker
I found my children's first laughs more exciting than their first words. Laughter sublimates speech, pierces it with its edge to be unleashed like Pandora's manna. After crying upon his arrival into the world, stammering his first words is exciting and if they laugh after his first attempts to express himself, it turns out wonderful. Ayy, the first things that remain to be discovered and verbalized...
The emotion of a father at his son's first verbal expressions drives the continuation of the cycle that Neuman dedicates to fatherhood. This chronicle of language initiation delves into the enigma of those essential learnings that we will never remember: starting to walk, speak, form identity and organize our memories. A lyrical story whose findings resonate both on an intimate and collective level, the author pays tribute to early childhood, the result of a rare balance between falling in love and observation.
little talker It belongs to a rare genre of love literature: that which a father writes for his son. His pages capture a man's astonishment at fatherhood and his incessant rereading of the present, dialoguing with the current transformations in everyday sensitivity and family roles.
