Andres Barba [Granta's Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists]

As we mentioned last Friday, we’re going to spend the next 22 days highlighting all of the authors selected for Granta’s _“Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” special issue. All past and future posts related to this issue can be found by clicking here.

First up: Spanish author Andres Barba, whose new short story “The Coming Flood” is included in this issue.

I’ve been hearing about Andres Barba for years thanks to Lisa Dillman. She’s been extremely active in promoting Barba—hailing him as one of the “great young Spanish authors” before this issue of Granta was a footnote in an editor’s dreaming eye.

In fact, one of the first reviews we ever published on Three Percent was this piece by Lisa on Barba’s La hermana de Katia. Katia is an interesting, strange novel, which was also made into a film.

Barba’s a pretty prolific writer . . . He’s all of 35 years old, and in addition to Katia, he’s the author of the novels Ahora tocad musica de baile, Versiones de Teresa, Las manos pequenas, Agosto, octubre, and Muerte de un caballo. In addition (in addition?!?), he received the Anagrama Essay Prize for La ceremonia del porno and wrote a colleciton of novellas entitled La recta intencion. (More on that in a second.)

“The Coming Flood,” the new story included in this issue, which was translated by Lisa Dillman, is about a woman willing to do whatever it takes (mainly prostituting herself) in order to get enough money to have a horn implanted on her face. Which is as strange as it sounds, but is a desire that gathers in intensity as the story progresses:

The idea has a life of its own. She closes her eyes, overcome, feeling something sweet, sharp, finally full of harmony; the safety of the bone. Operations in the past: lips once, breasts four times, ribs removed, cheekbones done, and in her diary, sometimes, between one operation and the next, she’d write ‘I’m a monster.’ Other times she’d write: ‘For my next operation . . .’ Her writing now is perky, vibrant. She doesn’t sleep that night either. Little by little the unrest subsides, but come dawn, it’s back. Now the house, a dank place, befits her large body. Because the body secretes feelings, but you’ve got to be close enough to perceive them. And one day she leaves home and lets out a low moan she’d have liked to make last. Who could say why she walks there when what she wants is to avoid the place? But she holds onto the railing at the entrance and then, as if thrust forcefully, takes one step and then another with the trusty tick-tock of a clock. ‘My face with a horn, my smile with a horn, my arms and legs and tits and cunt with a horn.’ She needs the vulgarity of those words, but there’s no more money. There are no more calls, no more film shoots.

As a special bonus, Lisa Dillman was kind enough to send us an excerpt from Barba’s Nocturne, one of the novellas from La recta intencion. Since this is a pretty long sample, and since I tend to write too many over-long blog posts, I’m going to make this a separate entry, which you can “find here.”:

And don’t forget, if you want to read all of “The Coming Flood” (and 21 other pieces), you can receive this issue for free by subscribing to Granta.

Up tomorrow: Santiago Roncagliolo.