Cremation by Rafael Chirbes
Along the Mediterranean coastline in Spain, real-estate developers scramble to transform the once pastoral landscape into tourist resorts and beachfront properties, with their lavish bars, pools, and nightclubs. The booming post-Franco years have left everything up for grabs. Crematorium opens with Mat as's death, who had rejected all of these changes, which sets off a chain reaction, uncovering a family's 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, Crematorium explores the cocaine glimmer and champagne fizz of luxurious parties and their accompanying underworlds of political corruption, prostitution, financial speculation, and the melancholy ouroboros of capitalist greed that led to the financial crash, while capturing 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 who we really are.
"Chirbes imbues the characters with passion and intellect..what emerges is a strong sense of late 20th-century Spanish culture and politics." -- Publishers Weekly
"A man’s death stirs thoughts among his family and friends, who are also connected by their experience of Spain’s economic surge through the early aughts. A challenging excursion from one of Europe’s most distinctive voices." -- Kirkus, (Starred Review)
"Utterly convincing in its psychological details, but also memorable for the beauty of its writing and rhythms." -- Colm Tóibín
"Rafael Chirbes is a master of the kind of Spanish literature that shines most brightly in lyrical descriptive passages and powerful metaphors." -- Mara Faye Lethem - The New York Times
"The works of the late Spanish novelist Rafael Chirbes offer a rebuke to what we might call lifestyle literature. Two of his final novels, Cremation and On the Edge, both published in translation by New Directions, reclaim a decayed form of modernism to castigate the late aughts’ feast of mammon." -- Dustin Illingworth - The Baffler
"Chirbes' novel is a quite powerful book of testimonies and experiences, an indictment of post-Franco Spain that has barreled more or less blindly ahead, damn to many of the consequences." -- Complete Review
"A man’s death stirs thoughts among his family and friends, who are also connected by their experience of Spain’s economic surge through the early aughts. A challenging excursion from one of Europe’s most distinctive voices." -- Kirkus, (Starred Review)
"Utterly convincing in its psychological details, but also memorable for the beauty of its writing and rhythms." -- Colm Tóibín
"Rafael Chirbes is a master of the kind of Spanish literature that shines most brightly in lyrical descriptive passages and powerful metaphors." -- Mara Faye Lethem - The New York Times
"The works of the late Spanish novelist Rafael Chirbes offer a rebuke to what we might call lifestyle literature. Two of his final novels, Cremation and On the Edge, both published in translation by New Directions, reclaim a decayed form of modernism to castigate the late aughts’ feast of mammon." -- Dustin Illingworth - The Baffler
"Chirbes' novel is a quite powerful book of testimonies and experiences, an indictment of post-Franco Spain that has barreled more or less blindly ahead, damn to many of the consequences." -- Complete Review
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780811224307 |
| ISBN 10 | 0811224309 |
| Title | Cremation |
| Author | Rafael Chirbes |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing Corporation |
| Year published | 2021-12-14 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |