Reviews

“An unusual crime novel. San and the crime it conceals inside, like a precious stone, transcends all known periods and grants the reader the opportunity to judge an instant, paradoxically, through its insignificance. It is not a traditional crime novel, but rather an homage to Nature with a capital N, that Nature that is the nucleus of Astur’s work. With a sensuous style that produces an almost physical effect, Astur plays with time, earth, and violence, weaving together a plot that finds its logic in disorder, like every real tragedy, and reminds us of something we had forgotten, enveloped in false security: namely that it is absurd to believe we are better simply because we are alive.” Mariana Sanmartín, ABC Cultural

“Brings together in a single work the harshest rural drama and the marvels of Magic Realism, and adds brushstrokes of the most recent tendencies in nature writing. The novel has the dimensions of a puzzle, with mythological and legendary beings and magical episodes. Manuel Astur’s verbal creativity combines freedom of imagination and avant-garde techniques. His prose is fluid and ductile, and his flair for the word allows him to pack dozens of verbs into a single paragraph. All this is in the service of a free observation of nature with hints of parable. This literary novel has the seal of determined originality, and is the admirable work of an author worth following.” Santos Sanz Villanueva, El Cultural

“Manuel Astur’s voice brings back ancient songs, with this novel that is a wild and beautiful tale, both lyric and raw, alarmist and delicate.” Víctor M. Amela, La Vanguardia

“We will need miracles, and novels like this are precisely that, miracles. It will have a spot in the History of World Literature” Juan Soto Ivars, El Cultural

“It is a pleasure to be surprised by the beautiful images found during the reading of this little mythology. Brutality and scorn are mixed together with tenderness and innocence.” S. Fernández-Prieto, La Razón

“The author is calling out to a society that has lost its course and points out through the pages a way back to innocence. I cannot describe the beauty of this prose without spoiling it.” Juan Soto Ivars, El Periódico

“After a couple of pages of this miraculous book I feel myself immersed in the fresh atmosphere of good literature (…) A story about the loneliness of those that are different, the defeat of the weak, the dramatic landscapes of those places on earth that no longer matter. (…) This beautiful novel smells like a literary miracle that will save us all.” Fulgencio Argüelles, El Comercio

“One of the most exquisite writers of the Spanish literature” Anna María Iglesia, The Objective.

Author Biography

Manuel Astur (Asturias, 1980) is the author of some books of poetry and short-stories, as well as the praised essay Seré un anciano hermoso en un gran país (Sílex, 2015). He contributes articles and reviews in Spanish media outlets such as ABC Cultural, Quimera, Qué Leer, El confidencial or Revista de Letras, among others.

In 2017, the European Union, through the Literary Europe Live project, and the association of European Literature Festivals and Literature Across Frontiers, chose him as One of the Ten Most Interesting New Voices in Europe (he was the only Spanish representative).

His latest published work is the novel San, el libro de los milagros (Acantilado, 2020).