On the Edge

Utterly convincing in its psychological details, but also memorable for the beauty of its writing and rhythms – Colm Tóibín
A dizzying survey of the last 90 years of Spanish history… Margaret Jull Costa’s incandescent translation carries along Esteban’s turbulent torrent… When this book finally releases its grip, you may find your lapels sullied by grubby fingerprints you are in no rush to scrub out – Mara Faye Lethem * New York Times *
Chirbes, one of Spain’s premier writers, is at his best when fully immersed, as he is in this novel. If Proust and an Old Testament prophet had collaborated to write about Spain’s recession, it might have been something like the writing here - agonized, dense, full of rage, and difficult to forget * Publishers Weekly *
On the Edge, Chirbes’s masterpiece, arrives as a message in a bottle among all the cans, rusting appliances, and tangled tackle. The fumes of the lagoon mix with the lingering sulfur of the Atocha railway-station bombing; the Spanish economy has all but collapsed. Who, or what, is to blame? Chirbes’s novel accuses everyone – Joshua Cohen * Harper’s *
A moving, densely detailed portrait of people without hope * Kirkus Reviews *
On the Edge is masterful, a centrifugal novel with sentences like sticky tentacles that clutch onto readers and suck them into a swirling, tempestuous, pulsating center – Valerie Miles
This is the great novel of the crisis. The corrosive voice of Rafael Chirbes paints a portrait of a universe of unemployment and disappointment?the long hangover that follows the party of corruption * El País *
Literature, as Adorno once said, is a clock that keeps ticking. But it is also the best tool for understanding the world when reality is torn to shreds. Both rules are strictly complied with by great authors. And Rafael Chirbes is one of them * El Mundo *
Chirbes has lent his main narrator an engaging voice of cultured pessimism… On the Edge is at its best when it locks the reader into Esteban’s fluid internal monologue. From this a fascinating portrait emerges of a whole society… This is a disquieting and consistently illuminating novel. * Times Literary Supplement *
Stand[s] out among contemporary Spanish fiction. – Liza Cox * Totally Dublin *

Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015) wrote nine novels and received the National Prize for Literature and the Critics Prize for On the Edge. ABC named him ‘the best writer of the twenty-first century in Spain’.

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