Rodrigo Rey Rosa - Chaos, A Fable

PRAISE FOR RODRIGO REY ROSA

[Rodrigo] Rey Rosa is the consummate master, the best of my generation, which happens to include many excellent short-story writers.

Roberto Bolao

FOR THE AFRICAN SHORE , TRANSLATED BY JEFFREY GRAY

The African Shore felt very much to us like a story that only Rey Rosa could have told, a small, perfectly cut jewel that we can stare into endlessly. It is emblematic of the very rich exchange between Rey Rosas native Guatemala and the Morocco in which he lived for a decade, and its minimalist aesthetic points us toward an interesting new direction for Latin American literature to follow in the new century.

Best Translated Book Award judges, 2014

I read Rodrigo Rey Rosas The African Shore in a single night. It is a slim volume, only 136 pages, but, more importantly, Rey Rosa is one of the most economical writers Ive encountered in a long time. The exactitude and concise beauty of his prose illustrates not only what the characters do, but above all, what they see and what they perceive.

Justin Alvarez, Paris Review

Bolao wrote that Rey Rosa is the most rigorous writer of my generation, the most transparent, the one who knows best how to weave his stories, and the most luminous of all. Rigorous and luminous, spare and sensual, terse and hilarious, horrifying yet with a poetic, supernatural and metaphysical imagination, his writinglike that found in the novella The African Shore throws open windows in your mind as you read.

Francisco Goldman, BOMB

Elegantly written, The African Shore conveys much information about cultures, past and present, along with the people who straddle the worlds of Europe and Africa... Stunning in the simplicity and clarity of its style, this novel says a great deal in very few words, and the ending is perfect.

Seeing the World Through Books

Rodrigo Rey Rosa is a Guatemalan novelist whose short, minimalist prose demands being sifted through to uncover layers and interwoven strands that make the reading of The African Shore a rich and intense experience.

New York Journal of Books

FOR THE GOOD CRIPPLE , TRANSLATED BY ESTHER ALLEN

A writer of unprecedented originality, of an exigency that removes him from any common standing... Essential and necessary.

Vanguardia

Audacious, magical... a marvel of poetic efficiency and power. Rey Rosa deftly collapses the frontier that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, language and silence, civilization and barbarism.

San Francisco Chronicle

A sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line... his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.

Times Literary Supplement

FOR SEVERINA , TRANSLATED BY CHRIS ANDREWS

Rey Rosas book is both precious and precise. Its intense dreams, aphorisms, and literary lists are best read in one sitting. The author keeps readers on tenterhooks as issues of identity and desire ebb and flow along with a suspenseful episode involving the burying of a body. The fable here is a tale of love and forgiveness, which also includes the thievery of a book from Jorge Luis Borgess library. And while it would be impertinent to steal a copy, it is hard not to be tempted to grab a copy of this slim, terrific book.

Publishers Weekly

Severina is a satisfying, nicely crafted, and entertaining small tale of bookish obsessions, recommended to all who like a bit of clever literary fun.

Complete Review

Severina is a nuanced but passionate homage to the act of reading, to a life lived, as the narrator finally puts it, exclusively for and by books.

Zyzzyva

A complex meditation on books and why people read them; on the value of libraries, both public and private; and on how books contribute to the very essence of life for cultures, societies, and individuals.

Seeing the World through Books

FOR DUST ON HER TONGUE , TRANSLATED BY PAUL BOWLES

A genuinely surprising and original set of stories... a sense of violent unease shading into terror drifts up from every line... his writing has a sharp, almost sadistic edge.

Times Literary Supplement

Compelling in the extreme... these twelve tales (that) boast of hidden dangers and lurking terrors, are written in a deceptively undramatic style, with masterful restraint. Stories that continue to disturb and delight long after they are laid to rest.

Blitz

Twelve talesmany evoking the uncanny, most with surprise endingsexplore how people seek to gain power from others... Rey Rosa writes about danger and precarious stability in an effective, straightforward style.

Kirkus Reviews

OTHER TITLES BY RODRIGO REY ROSA

Severina

The African Shore

The Good Cripple

The Pelcari Project

Dust on Her Tongue

The Beggars Knife

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright 2016 by Rodrigo Rey Rosa

Translation copyright 2019 by Jeffrey Gray

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Previously published as Fbula asitica by Alfaguara in Spain in 2016. Translated from Spanish by Jeffrey Gray. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2019.

Excerpt from El aleph by Jorge Luis Borges. Copyright 1995 Maria Kodama, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542090353 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 1542090350 (hardcover)

ISBN-13: 9781542090506 (paperback)

ISBN-10: 1542090504 (paperback)

Cover design by David Drummond

First edition

For Xenia, who journeyed with me most of the way.

For Pa, who had to remain home.

CONTENTS

I saw yet another wonder in the royal palace. It was a large mirror hung over a rather deep well. From down inside the well, you could hear everything men and women said on the planet, and, raising your eyes, you could see all the cities and all the towns, as if you were there among them.

Lucian of Samosata, True History , Book One

PART ONE

On his last Sunday in Tangier, after giving a talk on the contemporary Mexican novel at the book fair, he visited Souani, a neighborhood in the lower part of Harun er-Rashid. He was looking for an old Moroccan friend of his whom he hadnt seen in almost thirty years, an artist and storyteller who claimed not to know his date of birththough it was sometime around 1940.

A few days earlier, while stopping over in Paris, a Majorcan artist hed just befriended had told him, Youve got to visit Mohammed. How long has it been? Its a pity, really. If you see him, give him my best.

The house stood on a small, steep streetNumber Eleven of the new, labyrinthine medinaone among many three- or four-story houses painted white and blue and, lately, here and there, Marrakech red.

Its been a long time, my friend, dont you think?

Mohammed Zhrouni raised his hand to his lips, took the other mans hand, then touched his heart.

Twenty years.

A little more.

Twenty-six, actually.