Piñols second novel (after Cold Skin) is a fanciful metafiction that lampoons adventure stories while telling one with great enthusiasm. Nineteen-year-old orphan Tommy Thomson, a ghost writer struggling to make a living in WWI London, is hired to record the account of a man on trial for murdering two sons of a duke on an expedition in the Congo. The tale that unfolds draws from Stanley, Conrad and Verne, and borrows names from historical figures, often with irony (the man on trial, for instance, is named Marcus Garvey). Tommy spends four years writing and rewriting Marcuss tale in which the doomed brothers and their enslaved African porters turned miners encounter a subterranean race reminiscent of Vernes Morlocks. (Marcus calls them Tectons and portrays them as a barbarous threat to above-ground civilization.) Piñol has layers of commentary at work, touching on perception, the nature of literature, the need for heroes and the faults of hubris. It is a smart book, and Piñol poses piercing questions; the adventure yarn that ties it all together is a great entertainment.
Albert Sánchez Piñol (Barcelona, 1965) is a Spanish author and anthropologist writing in the Catalan language. He has been described as a "significant European writer". His masterpiece "Cold Skin" was translated in 24 languages including Bulgarian. In 2003 the novel won the prize of the Spanish National Radio for literature and it is the first Catalan novel to break in the lists of the best-sellers in the world. His second book is released under the name "Pandora in Congo".
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