3 best books by Antonio Gala

If the comparison is allowed, I would say Anthony Gala is to literature what Pedro Almodovar to cinema. I don't usually like this type of reductionism, but in this case the analogies correspond to the perception of images that emerge from reading one and viewing the work of the other. And for me that perception is very marked.

It's a matter of light, of that light that reverberates in the white background of his works, and that in turn ends up stained by the vividness of intense colors of love, of uncontrolled emotions, of pure vitalism, of black contradictions, of the coagulated red of love and the bright yellow of madness and the rainbow of sex.

Anthony Gala He complemented his narrative work with journalistic incursions, with poetry and even with dramaturgy, without a doubt an author gifted for everything cultural, artistic and scenic.

3 recommended novels by Antonio Gala

The crimson manuscript

Extracting the anecdotal from history to transform it into transcendent, universal is a virtue within the reach of very few feathers. This novel reminded me at times The old Siren, by José Luis Sampedro. In both proposals, the historical is a scenario that pales before the human, with its small essence spreading intoxicating ...

Summary: In the crimson papers used by the Alhambra Chancellery, Boabdil - the last sultan - bears witness to his life as he enjoys it or suffers it. The luminosity of his childhood memories will soon dim, as the responsibility of an evicted kingdom falls on his shoulders. His training as a refined and cultured prince will not serve him for the tasks of government; her lyrical attitude will be fatally annihilated by an epic call to defeat.

From the quarrels of his parents to the deep affection of Moraima or Farax; from the passion for Jalib to the ambiguous tenderness for Amin and Amina; from the abandonment of his childhood friends to mistrust of his political advisers; from the veneration for his uncle Zagal or Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba to the abhorrence of the Catholic Monarchs, a long gallery of characters draws the scene in which Boabdil el Zogoibi, El Desventuradillo, gropes.

The evidence of living a crisis lost beforehand transforms it into a field of contradiction. Always simplifying, History accumulated accusations about him that are unfair throughout his story, sincere and reflective.

The culmination of the reconquest —with its fanaticisms, cruelties, betrayals and injustices— shakes the chronicle like a destructive wind, whose language is intimate and sad: that of a father explaining himself to his children, or that of a man the drift that talks to itself until it finds — devoid, but serene — its last refuge.

Wisdom, hope, love and religion only assist him in bursts on the path of loneliness. And it is that helplessness in the face of destiny that makes it a valid symbol for today's man. This novel won the 1990 Planeta Prize.

The crimson manuscript

Turkish pasion

Whether it is Turkish or Mexican really doesn't matter. What moves the action of this novel is the first term, passion. The love of that woman capable of everything to melt into the arms of the beloved man, without morals or restrictions, with the rush of hunger, with the despair of abstinence. If you complement all this with a real action born of spite, the plot turns out to be magnetic towards an end that is announced fatal, like intense love ...

Summary: Desideria Oliván, a young woman from Huesca with marital disappointments, in the course of a tourist trip through Turkey suddenly discovers the most overwhelming love passion in Yamam's arms, and although she knows almost nothing about him, she leaves everything to live at your side in Istanbul.

Time passes, and the intensity of this love persists, but the two lovers' relationships become more and more dramatic and more sordid, until Desideria's reunion with an old friend of hers who belongs to Interpol reveals their true nature. of Yamam's lucrative activities.

The story, admirably told through some supposed intimate notebooks of the protagonist, constitutes a bitter meditation on love, carried to its last consequences in the midst of a very pathetic climate, up to the physical and moral destruction, which Antonio Gala knows how to describe with the irresistible force of his style.

Turkish pasion

The impossible oblivion

In this grief that is to travel through the world, you forget what you can. And if you must not forget something, it must be because it made you feel alive, because it gave you encouragement, because it became eternal.

Summary: Minaya Guzmán disturbed men and women, made children and dogs fall in love. Minaya Guzmán: a mystery, like everything that attracts human beings without remission. "I'm not from here," he confessed on one occasion but they could not understand him because he was, without being, like us.

He looked like a man but his perfection, his beauty and the smile in his eyes must have alerted him to his difference. It was fairer and more peaceful, more respectful, above all, more serene, it seemed to be illuminated from within. Was it a dream or was it more life than life?

Antonio Gala leads us, by the hand of a narrator who knew, like no one else, who Minaya Guzmán was, beyond life, beyond death, towards the most hopeful light. It is not a mystery novel, but a mystery turned into a novel.

The Impossible Forgetting
5/5 - (12 votes)

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