Necropolis
Santiago Gamboa
Language: English
Pages: 464
ISBN: 1609450736
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
WINNER OF THE 2009 LA OTRA ORILLA LITERARY AWARD
Upon recovering from a prolonged illness, an author is invited to a literary gathering in Jerusalem that turns out to be a most unusual affair. In the conference rooms of a luxury hotel, as war rages outside, he listens to a series of extraordinary life stories: the saga of a chess-playing duo, the tale of an Italian porn star with a socialist agenda, the drama of a Colombian industrialist who has been waging a longstanding battle with local paramilitaries, and many more. But it is José Maturana—evangelical pastor, recovering drug addict, ex-con—with his story of redemption at the hands of a charismatic tattooed messiah from Miami, Florida, who fascinates the author more than any other. Maturana's language is potent and vital, and his story captivating.
Hours after his stirring presentation to a rapt audience, however, Maturana is found dead in his hotel room. At first it seems likely that Maturana has taken his own life. But there are a few loose ends that don't support the suicide hypothesis, and the author-invitee, moved by Maturana's life story to discover the truth about his death, will lead an investigation that turns the entire plot of this chimerical novel on its end.
In Necropolis, Santiago Gamboa displays the talent and inventiveness that have earned him a reputation as one of the leading figures in his generation of Latin American authors.
customs? There are Jews all over the world, he said. Good for you, I said, and good for me too, there are non-Jewish people in Israel. Don’t remind me . . . he said. If I had had bubonic plague or Ebola, the rabbi would have felt more comfortable beside me. He expressed his displeasure by turning in his seat, which given his size was quite a feat, and every now and again casting withering glances at my plate, as if instead of meat and vegetables it contained the raw, bleeding organs of a pig. I
is why we seek instant pleasures and put coke in our veins and look for ways to escape, but it doesn’t work, time is relentless and is always there in the corner, that’s what I want to ask the Big Boss, not even about my origin or about this shithouse where he made us live, but about the mystery of time; anyway, I’m finally getting to the point, because I don’t even understand myself anymore and I don’t want to write this letter again: in the blue envelope there is a map with an island marked on
shifted in his chair, frowned, and lifted one of his arms. “Let them go and make their Palestinian State in Gaza, they and the crazy fundamentalists, and leave us alone. The best thing that could happen to the West Bank would be to revert to Jordan, and be ruled from Amman.” There was not the shadow of a doubt in his words. “That would be my dream, because in the past, when we belonged to Jordan was the best time.” Between the wars of 1948 and 1967, the West Bank had been under Jordanian control,
everything he did, because starting with a dozen people he ended up seeing three hundred a week, that is, almost one whole cellblock. I hadn’t been in Moundsville long when I first heard about him. I was there because of a badly planned drugstore holdup that had ended in lots of shooting and people lying flat on the asphalt. My partner in crime, Teddy, born in Oregon but into a family from Puerto Rico, caught a bullet through one of his nostrils, which were more accustomed to receiving coke or
doesn’t mean anything. The paras knew he was going to report them. With this he fell asleep, although the light from the naked bulb was like a skewer in the brain. The next day, they took him from his cell and interrogated him in the kitchen. He had heard moans earlier, and now he saw blood on the tiles. They must have been putting the screws on someone, he thought, and it made his hair stand on end. Let’s see now, Ramoncho, are you going to cooperate with us today? It wasn’t Dagoberto