Rodrigo Rey Rosa is the author of many acclaimed novels and short-story collections, among them Severina and La orilla africana (The African Shore). He is the recipient of one of Guatemala’s most distinguished literary prizes, the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature, as well as the prestigious JosÉ Donoso Prize.
[Human Matter's] exploration of the history of violence and secrecy
in Central America has obvious relevance to today's politics, but
the tale of a writer trying to understand the truth behind the
things he's seeing gives the novel a resounding, universal echo.
(Vanity Fair) Had Rey Rosa written a nonfiction account of what he
learned from the missing-persons files [in the Historical Archive
of the Guatemala National Police], it likely would have been
gripping in its own right. Instead, Rey Rosa wrapped his real-life
search in a fictionalized container, and the results are haunting
and revelatory in ways that nonfiction couldn’t accomplish.
(Bookforum) Few books got under my skin in 2019 the way Rodrigo Rey
Rosa's Human Matter did. Were it simply a meditation on memory,
loss, and the way historical crimes can become part of the
atmosphere, that would have been enough. But the ways in which the
narrative blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction ultimately
adds to its thematic resonance; this is a novel that refuses to be
easily dismissed as fiction, and it may well prompt some readers to
wonder about their own compromises and complicities. (Words Without
Borders, "Our Favorite International Reads from 2019") Secrecy lies
at the heart of the story, manifesting itself in many ways…Of a
piece with the author's Dust on Her Tongue (1992) as an exploration
of political violence and its troubling reverberations. (Kirkus)
Human Matter makes the non-Latin American reader ask herself things
that she…would not have otherwise. It delicately illuminates some
of the pressure points of Guatemalan intellectual history and
introduces a number of roles that have obsessed the country: the
Indian, the police officer, the informer, the turncoat. (3:AM
Magazine) Rey Rosa, a Guatemalan writer often compared to Roberto
Bolano…was inspired to write a meta-novel about his experiences
[visiting Guatemala's National Police archive] and the stories he
uncovered. The result…reads like the journal of a heartbroken
researcher who stumbles on the darkest truths about his native
country. (Chicago Tribune) Political violence in Guatemala-past and
present-and how it filters into the life of one of its citizens
drives this short, intense novel...By the end of this novel you
feel glad to have come out on the other side and carry the hope
that Rodrigo Rey Rosa, those close to him, and his fellow
countrymen will do so, too. (New York Journal of Books) Rodrigo Rey
Rosa's fiction veers from the surreal to the naturalistic to the
speculative. In his newly-translated novel Human Matter, he opts
for a foray into (recent) history: the novel was inspired by his
visits to the Historical Archive of the Guatemala National Police,
and the disquieting information he discovered there (Vol. 1
Brooklyn) Human Matter is no conventional thriller—Rey Rosa doesn't
stop sharpening the self-referential, autofictional knife long
enough to cut that kind of drama. The drama, rather, subsists in
the writer's internal struggle to come to terms with the hideous
history of a country he has always had the privilege to escape, but
which is nevertheless his own. (Texas Observer) Required reading
for anyone who is interested in how we remember and record the
events that so many of us call 'history.' (Literary Hub) A quite
effective presentation of the near-recent Guatemalan conditions and
circumstances, with the odd (im)balance of the near-normalcy of the
everyday along with the ever-shifting and still ominous weight of a
deeply-entrenched violent history. (The Complete Review) [An]
intricately patterned novel…[Human Matter] leads the reader into
the maze of its confidences with great assurance. (Asymptote
Journal) What makes Human Matter so wonderful is the way that it is
constantly in dialogue with itself about what can be understood
from the information Rey Rosa is giving…The tension between the
fundamental pleasure of the novel –– which comes from trying to
piece together meaning out of the disparate information available
to us and the narrator's insistence that it's futile –– creates a
weirdly gratifying reading experience. Reader and narrator then are
engaged in similar journeys of discovery: ours is a fight with him
and the narrator's a fight with himself. (Chicago Review of Books)
An exercise in the resilience of human memory, [Human Matter]
integrates a broad swath of literary and global cultural
touchstones that situate it as a novel that is simultaneously a
great work of uniquely Guatemalan literature and a masterful piece
of world literature. (Asymptote Blog) What makes Rey Rosa different
from other practitioners of [autofiction] is his willingness to
interrogate reality. He is less navel-gazing and more
outward-looking: Rey Rosa might have been to the Archive in real
life, but he's less interested in himself as a person and more
interested in making sense of history...Though he reaches no
conclusion, Rey Rosa highlights the contradictions and complexities
inherent in histories and the way power is wielded to tell us
otherwise. (Necessary Fiction) Rey Rosa might have invented a new
way for metafiction to feel…For all its trickery, Human Matter
effectively thrusts the reader into the tedium and terror of the
real. (Full Stop) Rey Rosa’s novel is defined by frailty, the
sensation of the uncertain, those small ways of escaping the
suffocating Central American reality, the distance between what was
and what is possible to feel.
(Página 12)
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