The novel that has "devoured" Carles Mallol
The screenwriter recommends the western "On the Horizon," the debut novel by Hernán Díaz.
Readers are likely familiar with the work of Argentine writer Hernán Díaz thanks to Fortune (Periscope), the book that earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023 and was a huge global success. It portrayed the capitalist system from the heart of darkness, the New York Stock Exchange, whose literary strategies impressed the literary world. The playwright and screenwriter of As if it were yesterday Carles Mallol opens another door to this universe and especially recommends the author's previous novel, On the horizon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Prize in 2018 and was translated into a dozen languages (it arrived in Catalan in 2020, on Periscope): "I devoured it," he says.
Mallol defines the first novel by the Argentine writer, editor, and professor as "a revisitation of the Frankenstein myth in digital format." western". "To begin with, it's not a genre I read very often, but it has captivated me nonetheless, because the novel builds a character that captivates you, that surprises you, and above all because it's a reflection on how we live with stigmas, how we should fight against stigmas and how we can survive them.
On the horizon It tells the story of two Swedish brothers who, at the beginning of the 19th century, decided to emigrate to New York. However, due to a mistake, one of them ended up in San Francisco. The homage will travel in the opposite direction to the gold seekers and conquerors of the West. Along the way, they will encounter bandits, swindlers, gurus, Indians, and cowboys, in a story of survival with which Díaz wanted to "explore radical solitude." Díaz himself has experienced nomadism: the family went into exile from Argentina, he grew up in Sweden, he studied in London, and for the past twenty years he has lived in New York, where he teaches at Columbia University.
"On the horizon It is a novel full of worlds that makes you see that life is complex and that you can live with this," says Carles Mallol, a great lover of literary recommendations.