2022 began on a terrace overlooking the end of the world, sitting in an armchair that wasn’t mine, reading an illustrated book that didn’t even belong to me and that I devoured while waiting for dawn. I have read a lot this year, almost always at night. I read dangerously, more exposed than usual to the spells of books when they rip the skin. Since the first fortnight of January they have remained the five winters (Alfaguara), by Olga Merino, which will be a book of the year for life.
It all begins in that volume in 1992, in the recently dissolved Soviet Union, when a 28-year-old journalist settles in Moscow as a correspondent. In the Russian capital, Merino lives and describes the hinge of a disappearing world, and from whose snowfall emerges a historical and literary diary. Tied between what was and what is today, Olga Merino puts the reader in front of the refutation of history and the forging of a vocation. From the dissolution of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies and the Russian Supreme Soviet to the memory of Chernobyl, Olga speaks of two intense transformations: the one that an empire on the verge of collapse is going through and the one that prevails in the struggle for a voice determined to go out with punch in an all-crushing environment.
“I received light books, which I could return to between airports, wanting to read the same book as another person“
Reading hurried books for work, which are published, swallowed and digested in a hurry, makes you forget quickly or barely remember. That’s why I know those who stayed did so despite that circumstance. Since the beginning of spring I’ve been keeping the discovery of a perfect novel, which doesn’t even have a page to lose. Regard stonerby John Williams, a classic that I arrived at one Maundy Thursday morning, once again, on a terrace overlooking the end of the world, in a reading chair that wasn’t mine and with a copy that didn’t even belong to me. At the very least, the tragedy in the life of this college professor from a peasant family is overwhelming: his defeats, his renunciations, and his acceptance of them. Shakespeare has been speaking to you for 300 years, Mr Stone. Do you listen to him?».
Spring, which was also a euphoric and confusing time, I took detours and handwrote on planes. I received light books, which I could return to between airports, wanting to read the same book as another person. the double flameby Octavio Paz, e The loverby Margherita Duras, trampled on the sensations that the months produced in me when they turned precipitously towards summer. That was also the time for seedy discoveries like The beauty of the husbandby Anne Carsonwhich was falling apart as harmless reading.
“I no longer read dangerously, but with the conviction that every word will reach a safe haven“
I’ve read dangerously this year because I’ve been late to pages I should have known much sooner. person and up book of anxiety, For instance. And Islamic histories were also making their way into my library along with other maritime archives. I discovered Stevenson’s poetry and his Treasure Island. I returned to Metamorphosis from Ovidwhich was on the desk since the days of the third country. And also The odyssey in a version inspired by Samuel Butler’s translation, and bestiaries, many bestiaries, which I combined with nautical charts and sea stories. I spent the whole summer looking for a book that I ended up delivering.
Fall and winter came like a blizzard, ripping every sea off my desk and planting disease and insanity on my workbench. It is, perhaps, the new novel I’ve started working on. I no longer read dangerously, but with the conviction that every word will reach a safe haven, without detours, domes or balconies overlooking the end of the world.
