Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2021
432 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
An overflowing, mesmeric masterpiece about greed from "one of the most remarkable authors on the Spanish scene" (The Guardian).
Along the Mediterranean coastline of Spain, real-estate developers scramble to transform the once pastoral landscape into tourist resorts, nightclubs, and beachfront properties with lavish bars and pools. The booming post-Franco years have left everything up for grabs. Cremation opens with the death of Matías, a paterfamilias who had rejected all of these changes and whose passing sets off a chain reaction, uncovering a past that had been buried for years, and leading those closest to him to question the paths they've chosen.
In a rich mosaic narrative, filled with a hypnotic chorus of voices, Cremation explores the coked-up champagne fizz of luxurious parties shadowed by underworlds of political corruption, prostitution, and ruthless financial speculation. The novel enters that melancholy ouroboros of capitalist greed that led to the financial crash and captures something essential about our values, our choices, and our all too human mistakes. Like William Faulkner or Francis Bacon, Chirbes stares, clear-eyed, into the abyss, and portrays us as we really are.
Paperback original.
"[Chirbes'] prose can be dense and disorienting but it's always intelligent, and the translation by Miles seems excellent. While the main voices are generally distinctive, they all offer the author a convenient surrogate for brief rants and lectures on everything from art to literature, sex, money, aging, flowers, marriage, politics, history, and much more. A challenging excursion from one of Europe's most distinctive voices." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] stream-of-consciousness account of a family reckoning with its relationships—both ironclad and frayed—in the wake of a beloved uncle's death...Chirbes imbues the characters with passion and intellect. There's no conventional plot, but what emerges is a strong sense of late 20th-century Spanish culture and politics...It adds up to a fascinating look at human interactions." - Publishers Weekly
"Rafael Chirbes is a master of the kind of Spanish literature that shines most brightly in lyrical descriptive passages and powerful metaphors." - The New York Times
"Utterly convincing in its psychological details, but also memorable for the beauty of its writing and rhythms." - Colm Tóibín
This information about Cremation was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015) wrote ten novels and received the National Prize for Literature and the Critics Prize for On the Edge. ABC named him "the best writer of the twenty-first century in Spain."
Valerie Miles, an editor, writer, translator, and professor, is the cofounding editor of the literary journal Granta in Spanish.
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