-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
by Gustavo Faverón Patriau
Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend Daniel, who's been interned in a mental institution for murdering his fiance. When Daniel unexpectedly calls to confess what really happened, Gustavo's long-buried loyalty resurfaces and draws him into the center of a quixotic, unconventional investigation. As Daniel reveals his story through fragments of fables, novels, and historical allusions, Gustavo begins to retrace the past: from their early college days exploring dust-filled libraries and exotic brothels, to Daniel's intimate attachment to his sickly younger sister and his dealings as an antiquarian book collector. As the clues grow more macabre and more intricate with every turn, an increasingly skeptical Gustavo is forced to deduce a complex series of events from allegories that are more real than police reports, and metaphors more revealing than evidence.
With sumptuous prose and haunting imagery, Gustavo Faverón Patriau has crafted an unforgettable labyrinthine tale about the reality of human suffering, the healing power of stories, and the strength of fraternal bonds. The Antiquarian is a masterfully conceived, engrossing novel of murder, madness, and passion that is as entertaining as it is erudite, dark as it is illuminating.
"Starred Review. This perfect blend of page-turning narrative and knockout prose is as good as it gets - Patriau's book is pure pitch-black fun." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. At once heartbreaking and redemptive, the denouement illuminates a deep interconnection between horror and love. A powerful translation of the Spanish original." - Booklist
"Starred Review. A masterful debut in which a Peruvian literary critic and scholar crafts a metamystery that explores identity, deceit, guilt and narrative...Rarely does a literary mystery work on as many levels as this." - Kirkus
This information about The Antiquarian was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gustavo Faverón Patriau is the director of the Latin American Studies Program and an associate professor of Romance languages at Bowdoin College. He is the author of two books of literary theory and has edited anthologies on Roberto Bolaño and Peruvian literature. As a journalist and a literary and social critic, his articles and essays have appeared around the world in such publications as Daily Kos, Etiqueta Negra, and Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos.
If you liked The Antiquarian, try these:
by Edgar Gomez
Published 2025
A darkly comic memoir-in-essays about the scam of the American Dream and doing whatever it takes to survive in the Sunshine State—from the award-winning author of High-Risk Homosexual.
by Raul Palma
Published 2024
A genre-bending debut with a fiercely political heart, A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens explores the weight of the devil's bargain, following the lengths one man will go to for the promise of freedom.
by Hua Hsu
Published 2023
From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art.
Be sincere, be brief, be seated
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
