Albert Sánchez Piñol dares to continue 'Moby Dick'

Barcelona"My name is Ismael, Ismael Coficofin, and I think I survived only to tell you this story": that's how it begins After the shipwreck, the new novel byAlbert Sánchez Piñol (Barcelona, ​​1965), in which he dares to continue one of the most ambitious and at the same time cursed books of the 19th century, Moby Dick, of Herman MelvilleThe commercial and critical failure when it was published in 1851 was resounding, although over time it came to be considered one of the great novels in the history of literature.

After the shipwreckThe book, which will arrive in bookstores on February 24, will be the first book that Sánchez Piñol publishes with Univers, an imprint of Abacus Futur, after a long and prolific period at La Campana that began with Clowns and monsters in 2000 and continued with books as significant in his career as Cold skin (2002) and Victus (2012). The new novel begins where it ends Moby Dick: after the ship Pequod Having sunk due to the onslaught of the great white whale, Ishmael is rescued by the Lonia...a ship abandoned in misfortune, following an erratic course and having the misfortune of a reckless captain. "If in Moby DickAhab, an ambitious individual beyond all reason, beguiled sensible men until he led them to the abyss, to Lonia"A crew possessed by an idea overflows the limits of authority and leads the ship to a fatal destiny," the editorial states in a press release. "Somewhere between the works of Emilio Salgari, Robert Louis Stevenson, and classic adventure novels, After the shipwreck It can also be read as a political fable and universally portrays the passions and dilemmas of the human soul."

Albert Sánchez Piñol is one of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary Catalan novelists and one of the most widely read of the 21st century. His works include, in addition to novels such as Cold skin (2002), Victus (2012) and The monster of Saint Helena (2022), the essay on creative writing The elementary structures of narrative (2021) and the unclassifiable The darkness of the heart (2025), in which the author skillfully blended history, biographical essay, anthropology, improbable anecdotes, and his own experience He had traveled to Congo in the late 1990s to write reports for an NGO and ended up finding a surprise that turned his life upside down.