Adolfo Garcia Ortega

Hay que ser muy valiente para volver a amar cuando se ha roto el mapa de la vida.

Ada, experta en el Renacimiento, y Gabriel, diseñador de montañas rusas, han sobrevivido al atentado del 11-M. Sus almas y sus cuerpos han salido malparados de aquellos trenes. Sin embargo, la vida les ha dado el regalo de encontrarse y superar el horror mediante una historia de amor inesperada, unidos contra el mundo. Hay que ser muy valiente para trazar un nuevo camino cuando se ha roto el frágil mapa que ayuda a orientarse en la vida.

Ada y Gabriel comparten experiencias extraordinarias, descubren una ciudad renovada en la que todo es posible, se cruzan con víctimas y verdugos, presienten la amenaza de un nuevo horror, pero por encima de todo descubren una nueva naturaleza en ellos: algo fantástico que les permite adentrarse en el pasado, presente y futuro.

En El mapa de la vida hay ángeles que vislumbran un universo de maravillas míticas que entrelazan de modo portentoso la Florencia del siglo XIV, la fi gura de Mahoma, la cárcel de Guantánamo, la Nazareth de una joven Miriam y el mestizaje más absoluto de la ciudad contemporánea. Sólo Adolfo García Ortega podía trazar un mosaico narrativo tan original. Una novela impactante que constituye un hermoso canto a la vida.… (lisätietoja)

Febrero de 2010. Después de la muerte de su ex mujer, un director de cine, apellidado con una enigmática K., decide viajar de manera errática por Europa para hacer una última y extraña película. En ese viaje conoce a Sidonie, una periodista destinada en La Haya que asiste al juicio de un líder de la antigua Yugoslavia. Un descubrimiento inesperado que puede modificar el rumbo de ese juicio obligará a los protagonistas a realizar un viaje frenético acosados por unos hombres que tratan de disuadirles.… (lisätietoja)

The Birthday Buyer
By Adolfo García Ortega
Translated by Peter Bush
Hispabooks Publishing
978-84-94174-452
$15.29, 258 pgs

This past January I climbed the stairs beyond the bookcase. It was drizzling that day; Amsterdam brooding magnificently in the chill. I had a 10-hour layover and took the train into the center of the city to visit The Anne Frank House. I was okay until I climbed that staircase. Otto Frank survived the “purifying fire;” he walked out of Auschwitz, the only member of his family to do so. He was in the sick barracks when the Soviets liberated the camp on January 27, 1945. I wonder if he knew Hurbinek.

The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo García Ortega, translated by Peter Bush, is the story of Hurbinek, a little boy who was born and died in Auschwitz. He is malnourished and developmentally stunted to the extent that he cannot speak or walk. Primo Levi wrote of this little one, with whom he shared the sick barracks in 1945, in his book The Truce, “Nothing remains of him; he bears witness through these words of mine.”

The narrator, obsessed with the holocaust and the story of Hurbinek in particular, is on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz when he is involved in a near-fatal auto accident outside Frankfurt. He is laid up in a hospital for a few weeks, despairing that he has failed in his mission to pay homage to Hurbinek. Like Hurbinek, he cannot walk – his knees have been shattered. Drawing parallels between his condition and Hurbinek’s, mindful of Mengele and his compatriots, the narrator attempts to resist paranoia brought on by, among other things, the German accents of his doctors. In this psychological hothouse he chews on the un-life of Hurbinek.

Ortega has attempted to restore the humanity that was stolen from so many by giving identity to this specific anonymity. He tells us, “I’m horrified to think that Hurbinek, with all his strength and desire to live, only experienced a pre-life, only lived a strange extension of his mother’s uterus.” Ortega has given Hurbinek a complete backstory. He has given him parents, Sofia and Yakov Pawlicka of Poland, and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. He has anchored Hurbinek’s existence in history and geography and anthropology. The author imagines several alternative lives for Hurbinek: he became a celebrated set and costume designer for the stage in Moscow; or else a model employee of the Budapest Tram System; or else a writer of award-winning biographies in Spain; or else a seminary student in France who gave up his calling to devote himself to cinema; or else a famous Bulgarian conductor; or else an antiquities appraiser for Sotheby’s; or else an infamous Israeli photographer and satirist; or else a homosexual radio journalist in Greece. These were all full lives that would've restored some beauty to the world.

Whew…difficult, this. Harrowing. In the interests of honesty and full disclosure, I wanted to put this book down and walk away. I wanted to never pick it up again. But I couldn’t. Once begun, I felt it necessary to bear witness, if only in imagination. A duty, if you will. Mercifully, the language is beautiful and the premise intriguing.

Adolfo García Ortega is a translator, literary critic, journalist and former editorial director of the Spanish publishing house Seix Barral. He is currently Associate Publishing Director of the Planeta Publishing Group. His critically acclaimed novels have won numerous prizes.… (lisätietoja)

One man narrates his quest about an obsession with Desolation Island in the Straits of Magellan

"What a cruel scenario of clouds and coasts that threaten and promise so much, Griffin suddenly exclaimed, raising his glass and standing up in front of me, offering a macabre toast. I drink to you, scenario of so much desire and disappointment, he said, of so much drama and bliss, of suffering, torments, scares, rescues, voyages, I drink to you, shipwrecks, struggles, loves, massacres, revolts, I drink to you, whims, hopes, spoils, glimpses, plans, strategies, misfortunes, loneliness, yes, a toast to you, accursed, fascinating place."

In Maderia our narrator meets a man called Griffin and spends many days listening to his story of his obsession with the Desolation Island of the title and his quest to reach there inspired by a photograph of his grandparents embracing a strange automaton which now resides in the Punta Arenas museum. Along the way there are many, oh so many, digressions and tangents of stories within stories, biographies within biographies and the sometimes bizarre history of the tip of South America. Bringing in notable fiuctions, such as moby dick and a host of characters both real and imagined including some famous and some not so famous who are all roped into a rambling meandering story. The strength or weakness of the book depending on your view is that it covers so much and spends so long getting to the point of Griffin's story as to his journey and his arrival and what happens when he finally reaches his long dreamt of destination however that would have been a much shorter poorer novel than the rich tapestry of tall tales we have here.

Overall - possibly a frustrating read (if you want straight narrative) but very rewarding… (lisätietoja)