I’m back at Shiny New Books with a review of a new Mexican novel: Álvaro Enrigue’s Sudden Death (translated by Natasha Wimmer). As I note in my introduction, there’s some really exciting fiction from Mexico appearing in my translation (see my posts on books by Yuri Herrera, Paulette Jonguitud, and Juan Pablo Villalobos, for example); Sudden Death is no exception.
How to describe it, though? The novel is built around a game of tennis between Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo. But it also deals with the forces that shaped the formation of the modern world in the 16th and 17th centuries – and which, perhaps, still help to shape the world today. A synopsis can’t do it justice; you just have to read it.
A few links:
- My review of Sudden Death.
- The main Shiny New Books site.
- Sudden Death reviewed at Winstonsdad.
- A couple of interesting interviews with Álvaro Enrigue.
Book details (Foyles affiliate link)
Sudden Death (2013) by Álvaro Enrigue, tr. Natasha Wimmer (2016), Harvill Secker paperback
7th June 2016 at 2:00 pm
It sounds very interesting. This – “he pounded it with his racket as if it were a nail in Christ’s wrist” – is a marvellous line. I’ll take a look.
15th June 2016 at 5:03 pm
I’d be interested to hear what you make of it. It’s one of those idiosyncratic books that I’m just glad to have in the world – I didn’t catch everything in it, but that doesn’t matter.