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Horas muertas

Dead Hours | Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021

This is a novel about real ghosts. Or ghostly reality. If the past only survives in our memory but our memory assails us with paradoxes, obscure incidents or fictions larger than life, where does that leave us?

A man is walking around Dublin. Suddenly, on the street, he recognizes another passerby: his old companion Krauel, who killed himself seven years before. What’s he doing in Dublin, seven years after his death?

Both worked for a while as scriptwriters for a crime-drama television producer. With one particularity: the series had to reflect what actually happened to them. Or was it the other way around, and the things they imagined in the scripts ended up happening in their lives? Finally, the protagonist decides to use one of the scripts to honor his father, who died after being fired from his job by an unscrupulous executive.

With a terse, tense voice, firm rhythm, and exquisite prose, Garriga Vela has composed a novel that immerses us in a ghostly reality in which the past is never past. A profound work in which the secrets buried in memory flourish and color everything strange.

Horas muertas

Dead Hours | Galaxia Gutenberg, 2021

This is a novel about real ghosts. Or ghostly reality. If the past only survives in our memory but our memory assails us with paradoxes, obscure incidents or fictions larger than life, where does that leave us?

A man is walking around Dublin. Suddenly, on the street, he recognizes another passerby: his old companion Krauel, who killed himself seven years before. What’s he doing in Dublin, seven years after his death?

Both worked for a while as scriptwriters for a crime-drama television producer. With one particularity: the series had to reflect what actually happened to them. Or was it the other way around, and the things they imagined in the scripts ended up happening in their lives? Finally, the protagonist decides to use one of the scripts to honor his father, who died after being fired from his job by an unscrupulous executive.

With a terse, tense voice, firm rhythm, and exquisite prose, Garriga Vela has composed a novel that immerses us in a ghostly reality in which the past is never past. A profound work in which the secrets buried in memory flourish and color everything strange.