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Una voz única en la narrativa contemporánea, que llega de Sudáfrica. La crueldad y las miserias humanas, tratadas con estilo despojado y certero: un magistrado sudafricano, un cruel militar, una trama de contradicciones y miserias que componen en relieve la complejidad de la naturaleza humana y los sinuosos caminos entre el bien y el mal.
Nunca he visto nada parecido: dos pequeños discos de vidrio que unos aros de alambre sostienen delante de sus ojos.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
One evening, rubbing her scalp with oil, massaging her temples and forehead, I notice in the corner of one eye a greyish puckering as though a caterpillar lay there with its head under her eyelid, grazing. [...]
It has been growing more and more clear to me that until the marks on this girl's body are deciphered and understood I cannot let go of her. Between thumb and forefinger I part her eyelids. The caterpillar comes to an end, decapitated, at the pink inner rim of the eyelid. There is no other mark. The eye is whole.
I look into the eye. Am I to believe that gazing back at me she sees nothing--my feet perhaps, parts of the room, a hazy circle of light, but at the centre, where I am, only a blur, a blank? (Penguin Ink 35-36)
When Warrant Officer Mandel and his man first brought me back here and lit the lamp and closed the door, I wondered how much pain a plump comfortable old man would be able to endure in the name of his eccentric notions of how the Empire should conduct itself. But my torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well, which very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into it till it coughs and retches and flails and voids itself. They did not come to force the story out of me of what I had said to the barbarians and what the barbarians had said to me. So I had no chance to throw the high-sounding words I had ready in their faces. They came to my cell to show me the meaning of humanity, and in the space of an hour they showed me a great deal. (Penguin Ink 132-33)
"No, you misunderstand me. I am speaking only of a special situation now, I am speaking of a situation in which I am probing for the truth, in which I have to exert pressure to find it. First I get lies, you see — this is what happens — first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth. That is how you get the truth."
Últimas palabras
Esta no es la escena con la que soñé. Como otras muchas cosas ahora, la dejo con una sensación de estupidez, como alguien que se extravió hace mucho tiempo pero persevera por un camino que puede n o conducir a ninguna parte.