Novel
El bandido doblemente armado
Not translated into English
Soledad Puértolas · 1980
Synopsis
In a city the book does not name, a young man who would like to become a writer tells what binds him to the Lennoxes, a family of rich, handsome and extravagant foreigners, of whom he is a childhood friend of one of the sons, Terry. He goes through each of them in turn: the mother, a widow, who remarries a foreigner younger than herself, James, whose political career is wrecked by his love affairs, Eileen, Linda and his impossible conquest, and Terry, the enigma of the family. The group portrait hints at tormented personalities and long-hidden dependencies.
Context
The first novel by its author, the book won the Sésamo prize in 1979 and was published in Madrid by Legasa in 1980; Anagrama has reissued it, then placed it at the head of the first volume of her selected works. The narrator, a selfish, immature and ambitious apprentice writer, is its true subject, and one closes the book knowing little about the family he has been watching. The cold, detached observation and the taste for the unsaid and the uncertain are already those of her whole body of work. Anne Bragance translated it into French for Jacqueline Chambon in 1989.
Who it is for
A short novel, made of portraits more than of a plot; one must accept not understanding everything about those it describes.
Prizes and reception
Awarded the Sésamo prize in 1979 and published in 1980, then reissued by Anagrama and translated into French.
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