“Reading this novel has been very exciting, like finding my father at 24 years old, like a photograph explained, or like traveling to the past with a time machine,” says Daniel Vázquez Sallés, son of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, about The Papers. by Admunsen (Navona), the first novel that his father wrote and which hit bookstores this Monday. Vázquez Sallés said it in the Modelo prison, where the author – as well as his wife, Anna Sallés – was detained for a few months, a stay that comes to light in the work.
For José Colmeiro, a student of his work who, in the course of research, found the original – whose details La Vanguardia already reported last April –, the book “is like a black box that includes a multitude of elements that will later be in its narrative: intrigues, political struggles, even the Arthurian literature of the last era is here, and also his experimental literature begins in this book, in which he uses Admunsen’s alter ego as a filter to confront society. Colmeiro has pointed out that the threads that unite the author and the narrator are multiple, not only because he has just been released from prison – it is estimated that it was written between 1962 and 1965, and the author was imprisoned between 1962 and 1963 -, or that his narrator He is a writer who cannot publish and has to dedicate his time to other work – both Admunsen and Vázquez Montalbán write poetry intended for advertising – in addition to politics and clandestinity. According to the editor Ernest Folch, in fact, “it is the novel by Vázquez Montalbán that best describes the weight of prison and the clandestine struggle.”
Vázquez Sallés wanted to highlight that “the discovery of the novel has been the result of research, work that has found the value of what was found, and it has not been a coincidence.” For him, in addition to “discovering in black on white the readings and songs, or what the clandestine struggle meant, it is a very luminous novel that is fantastic for understanding what was happening in Spain in the sixties.” And although the characters have Nordic names – in addition to Admunsen there are Ilsa, Hans or Laarsen – and it is located in the city of Leiden (Netherlands), it undoubtedly happens in Barcelona, ??because as Folch has recalled, “Vázquez Montalbán played to mislead to the censorship, but there is a fair that is Fira de Barcelona, ??the neighborhood of Admunsen’s parents is like Barcelona’s Raval, and in the end the novel anticipates the Barcelona that will later preside over all of his work.
Colmeiro has pointed out “the quality and modernity of the book, as it introduces previously unpublished topics such as criticism of patriarchal society or consumerism, and is innovative due to the form and the different levels at which it is written, including the chronicle of the palaces the caves”. For the researcher, in fact, the experimental style of the novel was perhaps a compelling reason for not publishing it after years, since in the seventies “he was already with the chronicle”, but he does not doubt that he would be delighted for it to be published. will publish today, “without prejudice.” Folch insists that “there are two certainties: one is that he did not publish it, and another is that he did not destroy it either – as he did with the texts that he rejected. There is also another certainty, that the original was complete, corrected and thoroughly revised.” Colmeiro adds that, even so, the conditions of the typing in some passages were difficult and the text had to be reconstructed letter by letter. Reconstruct a first novel that has also been the last.
