Description:
"A ghost story without ghosts that, beyond its formal elegance, explores loneliness, the cycles in which our lives revolve, and the immeasurable challenges of affection."--Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night
In this contemporary ghost story, award-winning author Andrés Barba eerily explores how the past can hold us captive, as a woman encounters a boy with an otherworldly stare in an empty house.
While eagerly preparing a house for prospective buyers, a woman finds herself face to face with a strange sight: a seven-year-old boy who doesn't blink. Seemingly appearing and disappearing before her again and again, he sooner resembles an apparition. But one thing is clear: the boy wants something from her. Choosing to leave her everyday world behind, the woman steps through the looking glass, inadvertently nurturing a disturbing co-dependence and discovering a suspended time, a loop, and another life in the process.
Containing all the elements of a perfect ghost story, Last Day of a Prior Life is a richly atmospheric, disturbing, and dazzling gem of a novel that calls to mind the gothic tales of Shirley Jackson and the fractured realities of Black Mirror. Award-winning author Andrés Barba demonstrates his exquisite talent for dissecting human intimacy and excavating the links between past and present, while delivering a masterful exploration of human longing and the ties that bind us, even across time itself.
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
Brief description:
Andrés Barba is the award-winning author of numerous books, including Such Small Hands and The Right Intention. He was one of Granta's Best Young Spanish novelists and received the Premio Herralde for his most recent novel, Luminous Republic, which was translated into over twenty languages. He lives in Argentina.
Review Quotes:
"A ghost story without ghosts that, beyond its formal elegance, explores loneliness, the cycles in which our lives revolve, and the immeasurable challenges of affection." - Mariana Enríquez, author of Our Share of Night, on Last Day of a Prior Life
"Every now and then, an author not only documents reality, but creates an entirely new one, one that illuminates our darkest feelings. Kafka did it. Bruno Schulz did it. And now Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it too." - Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and The Loves of My Life
"Wholly compelling." - Colm Tóibín, New York Times bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island, on A Luminous Republic
"A terrifying masterpiece . . . Andrés is a write of extraordinary talent." - Omar El Akkad, New York Times bestselling author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, on A Luminous Republic
"A rapturous fable and a ruinous forecast of the havoc that comes from civil inaction." - Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need and Ways To Disappear, on A Luminous Republic
"One of the best books I've ever read . . . There is an air of magic, black and white, lingering around every page of this epic novel of 192 pages, like gun smoke after a shootout. " - Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story and The Loves of My Life
"At first this book will scare you, but after that you feel something much deeper, disturbing and luminous." - Samanta Schweblin, Author of the National Book Award winning Seven Empty Houses, on A Luminous Republic