Fracture: A Novel
About this ebook
"The fragmented and destructive power wielded by memory and trauma in developing one's outlook on life, coupled with a two-pronged narrative technique for character development, makes Neuman's [ Fracture ] a winner." ― Library Journal (starred review)
Mr. Yoshie Watanabe, a former electronics company executive and a survivor of the atomic bomb, has always lived like a fugitive from his own memories. He's spent decades traveling the world, making a life in different languages, only to find himself home again, living in Tokyo in his old age. On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, Watanabe, like millions of others, is stunned by powerful tremors. A massive earthquake has struck to the north, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster—and a stirring of the collective past. As the catastrophe unfolds, Watanabe's mind, too, undergoes a tectonic shift. With his native land yet again under nuclear threat, he braces himself to make the most surprising decision of his nomadic life.
Meanwhile, four women who have known him intimately at various points in time narrate their stories to a strangely obsessive Argentinian journalist. Their memories, colored by their respective cultures and describing different ways of loving, trace sociopolitical maps of Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, and Madrid over the course of the twentieth century. The result is a metalingual, border-defying constellation of fractures in life and nature—proof that nothing happens in only one place, that every human event reverberates to the ends of the earth.
With unwavering empathy and bittersweet humor, and facing some of the most urgent environmental concerns of our time, Andrés Neuman's Fracture is a powerful novel about the resilience of humankind, and the beauty that can emerge from broken things.
"[Neuman is] a wildly talented and curious writer whose books roam energetically around the world and across genres. . . . Fracture is very much about how catastrophe and trauma ripple across the world—the book hopscotches from Tokyo to Madrid, Paris, Buenos Aires, and New York—and, in that sense, offers an eerie reflection of the global reach of our present pandemic." — Vanity Fair
" Fracture is by far . . . Neuman's most successful experiment. . . . That which should be said must be said—and Neumann undoubtedly says it beautifully." — The Guardian
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About the author
Andrés Neuman was born in 1977 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and grew up in Spain. Neuman was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists and was elected to the Bogotá-39 list. Traveler of the Century (FSG, 2012) was the winner of the Alfaguara Prize and the National Critics Prize, Spain's two most prestigious literary awards, as well as a special commendation from the jury of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Neuman has taught Latin American literature at the University of Granada.
Nick Caistor is a British translator from Spanish, French and Portuguese. He lived in Argentina for a number of years, and was the BBC Latin America analyst. He has translated more than 70 works of fiction, including authors such as Isabel Allende, Roberto Arlt, Mario Benedetti, Julio Cortazar, Maria Duenyas, Fogwill, Juan Marse, Eduardo Mendoza, Juan Carlos Onetti and Jose Saramago.
Lorenza Garcia was born and brought up in England. She spent her early twenties living and working in Iceland and Spain. In 1998 she graduated from Goldsmith's College with a First Class Honours degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies. She moved to France in 2001 where she lived for seven years. Since 2006 she has translated and co-translated over thirty novels and works of non-fiction from the French, the Spanish and the Icelandic.
