Personae

La vida de una brillante detective y la obra de un dramaturgo asesinado convergen en una reflexión en torno al destino, la justicia, el arte y la muerte Sergio de la Pava es una de las revelaciones de las letras Latinoamericanas en Estados Unidos, gracias a su trabajo y su talento ya se ha destacado como una de las figuras literarias del momento. Las misteriosas circunstancias que rodean la muerte de un hombre muy viejo, recién acaecida en un minúsculo apartamento de Manhattan, exigen la presencia de Helen Tame, una brillante detective obsesionada con la verdad. Pronto la mujer descubre en el lugar una caja y dentro de ella diversos textos, una serie de creaciones y apuntes heterogéneos de Antonio Arce, el escritor que acaba de morir, y se sienta a leerlos. El resultado (de la lectura, de su investigación) es este poderoso libro, una novela peculiar en la que se va a la caza de una muerte, sí, pero más que nada de la vida, de sus grandes preguntas, del arte, del amor, de la libertad creativa. Sergio De La Pava's A Naked Singularity was one of the most highly praised debut novels in decades. The Wall Street Journal called it "a propulsive, mind-bending experience," and named it one of the ten best books of the year. The Toronto Star did the same, calling it "a great American novel: large, ambitious, and full of talk." In Slate, Paul Ford proclaimed,"It's a fine thing for an author to bring forth something so unapologetically maximalist." This book is nothing like that one. Just look at it: A Naked Singularity was a brick of a book, 678 pages, and this one's slim--lean and focused. A Naked Singularity locked us into the unforgettable voice of its protagonist, Casi, while Personae shimmers and shifts among different perspectives, locations, and narrative techniques. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Personae begins with the investigation of a crime: Detective Helen Tame arrives at a Manhattan apartment where Antonio Arce, over a century old, has died. She eventually acquires Arce's notebook, and in due time we read the impressionistic memoir at its heart, but only after meandering through excerpts from Tame's scholarly paper on Bach and Glenn Gould, a short story about swimming out to sea, a two-act Beckettian play, Tame's explanation of Arce's death and two obituaries. The book's final 50 pages -- Arce's memoir -- take us from a suicide mission in the jungles of Colombia to a love story in New York City and feature some of the finest writing of De La Pava's burgeoning career.