Agustín Fernández Mallo: Trilogía de la guerra (The Things We’ve Seen)

The latest addition to my website is Agustín Fernández Mallo‘s Trilogía de la guerra (The Things We’ve Seen). As the Spanish title tells us this is a three-part novel, but published in a single volume in English. It is a novel in the style of W G Sebald. The first part is about a writer who goes to a conference on the Island of San Simón in the Vigo estuary but he is more interested in the fact that the island was a prisoner-of-war camp in the Spanish Civil War than in the conference. He goes to New York, where he is able to learn more about a prisoner in the camp. The second book is the story of Kurt Montana, the fourth astronaut on the first Apollo moon mission. Apart from his redacted moon mission, the rest of his life has been less than successful. The final story is by the girlfriend of the narrator of the first book. He seems to have disappeared after the conference – she does not know he has gone to New York – so she heads to Honfleur to visit parts of Normandy they had visited together and ruminate on a host of issues à la Sebald. The three stories are linked, often in unexpected ways but, above all, this novel is full of fascinating ideas, plot twists and ruminations on a variety of topics.

Leave a Reply