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€12.99
‘A book of deep reckoning’ New York Times
‘Becomes a way of looking honestly at what mourning really feels like’ Guardian
A man in tumult returns to Ordesa, the small mountain town where he was born, and where his parents have recently died. He sits down to write. Newly sober, his career on the wane, his relationship with his own children strained, what he produces is a dizzying chronicle of his childhood and an unsparing account of his life’s trials, failures and triumphs. He reckons with the ghosts of his parents, the pain of loss and, as the pages fill with words, he tries to piece together the bits of himself. What is a person without a family? What is a person when faced with memories alone?
An autobiographical novel by a Spanish literary icon, written with the intimacy of a diary, Ordesa is a beautiful, redemptive meditation on identity, grief and the passing of time.
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Ordesa – a small Spanish town in the Pyrenees – is where our narrator was born, a place his father loved dearly, a place suffused with memories. Now, forty-six years later, he returns to the valley with his own children on a summer vacation. His parents are dead, his marriage has ended and he’s struggling to piece together the bits of himself. Single and living in an apartment he hates, clinging to snatched moments of quality time with his apathetic children, newly sober and with his career on the wane, the ghosts of the narrator’s family besiege him, but also bring him hope. Out of despair, he writes this chronicle, this homage, this memoir of his family: grandparents whose photos were never taken, whose funerals were never attended, parents unable to show their love. Maybe the tragedy of life itself is not death, but truly realising the importance of family only once they’ve passed.
| Weight | 0.207 kg |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 19.8 × 12.9 × 1.8 cm |
| Author | |
| Publisher | |
| Imprint | |
| Cover | Paperback |
| Pages | 304 |
| Language | English |
| Edition | 1st paperback ed |
| Dewey | 863.7 (edition:23) |
| Readership | General – Trade / Code: K |
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