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the complete review - fiction

Los disparos del cazador

by
Rafael Chirbes

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : fairly well-done small atmospheric novel

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "Das Beispiel zeigt, wo die natürlichen Grenzen einer Übersetzung liegen. Sie ganz aufzuheben gelänge nicht einmal durch eine kongeniale Leistung. Denn nicht nur für die Lyrik, auch für Prosa von Rang gilt, daß die Autoren aus der Sprache dichten, anstatt nur mit deren Hilfe zu denken. In unserem Fall bleibt die deutsche Version noch öfter hinter dem Original zurück, als es der Eigenwille der beiden Sprachen erzwingt." - Eckhard Heftrich, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Los disparos del cazador is the story of an old man, nearing death, living alone in a house in Madrid, cared for by his servant, Ramón. The man, Carlos, narrates the story, and it is mainly one of looking back. He is haunted in the large, empty house by his memories.
       Carlos always presented himself as a pillar of strength, never showing weakness in his private or professional life, but the frailty of age reveals the hurt and fear that he carried with him for all of his life. His two loves, Eva and Elena, are gone. Eva, his wife, died. Elena, his mistress, an almost completely sexual object, left him. His isolation has become almost complete.
       The memories of his rise to some sort of success in the Spain of the 1940s and 50s weigh heavily on Carlos, the cost of it only now becoming clear to him. Chirbes uses the character to sketch an effective portrait of these times in Spain. He leaves the heavy Francoist spectre largely unspoken of but it clearly casts its pall over almost everything.
       Chirbes writes quite well, making for a decent, sombre little novella.

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Links:

• Ed. Anagrama publicity page
• Kunstmann publicity page

• carpe librum (German)
• El Cultural (Spanish)
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• Karines Kanon (German)
• Mi Casa es mi Mundo (Spanish)
• Senderos Retorcidos (Spanish)

• La buena letra
• Cremation
• Mimoun
• On the Edge

• See Index of Spanish literature

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About the Author:

       Spanish author Rafael Chirbes lived 1949 to 2015.

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