Glaxo: A Novel

Author(s): Hernan Ronsino

Novel

In a derelict town in Argentina's pampa, a decades-old betrayal simmers among a group of friends. One returns from serving time for a crime he didn't commit; another, a policeman with ties to the military regime, discovers his wife's infidelity; a third lays dying. And an American missionary has been killed. But what happened among these men? Spinning through a series of voices and timelines, Glaxo reveals a chilling story of four boys who grow up breaking horses and idolising John Wayne, only to become adults embroiled in illicit romances, government death squads, and, ultimately, murder.

Told from four different viewpoints and in four different decades, the story of both the effects of and the contributory factors to a murder does no so much unfold as fold in and in upon itself, becoming increasingly claustrophobic, despite the beautifully spare and open prose and the pampas setting, until it closes in upon the pivotal act itself, which causes all the previously read sections to shift and realign and reveal their significance. The mechanism is so well-oiled and precisely wrought that the great weights of economic change and the political turbulence of the 1950s (including of the León Suarez massacre) swing just out of sight. When the train tracks are torn up in the 1970s, the Glaxo pharmaceutical factory continues to loom above the town and above the novel, out of sight, a shadow across the text.


{THOMAS}


Product Information

"[A] brooding novel set on the windswept edge of the pampas Allusive and reserved, as if peeking out at the scene of the crime from behind drawn curtains An atmospheric mystery that is never obvious." Kirkus Reviews "One of the strongest storytellers of his generation." Matias Capelli, Los in Rocks (Argentina) "A young Argentine novelist who was chosen by the Guadalajara International Book Fair as one of the 25 most interesting writers in Latin America ... His writing offers a totally original vision." La Pulseada (Argentina) "Glaxo revolves around conflicts that may seem small, but are linked to grand emotions and experiences: envy, sex, crimes of passion, and betrayal." Pagina 12 (Argentina)"

Hernan Ronsino was born in Chivilcoy, a small town in Argentina's pampa, in 1975, and moved to Buenos Aires for his studies. The author of three novels and one short story collection, Ronsino is also an anthropologist and professor at the University of Buenos Aires. Samuel Rutter is a translator and writer from Melbourne, Australia. He has translated several authors from the Spanish, including Carlos Labbe, Daniel Sada and Juan Marse. In 2015 he was awarded a PEN Translates grant."

General Fields

  • : 9781612195674
  • : Melville House Publishing
  • : Melville House Publishing
  • : 0.367
  • : January 2017
  • : 191mm X 140mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Hernan Ronsino
  • : Paperback
  • : 863.7
  • : 96
  • : FHP