Description

Shakespearean drama set in a Galician context. There is something strikingly postmodern - or Elizabethan - about this novel, in which a man from Laracha, south-west of Coruña, on Galicia's famed Coast of Death, is on the run for committing a multiple murder that shocks the local community and has the priest calling for the razing of the local slums. Chucho Monteiro, who has always been overlooked by his father in favor of his younger brother, Daniel, more pliable, less violent, heads to the port of Coruña in order to effect his escape on the first ship weighing anchor, a ship that will take him not to Stratford, but to Southampton and on. In a fascinating, multi-layered narrative, the author keeps the reader guessing about the murderer's final destination until the very end. Narrative chronology is mixed up, and the veil between author and reader is torn in two, so that we're not sure if we are witnesses or partakers of this narrative. "Vicious" (called "Criminal" in Galician) is Xurxo Borrazás' second and best-known novel, and won him the Spanish Critics' Prize as well as the San Clemente Prize awarded by high-school readers. Other titles in the series Small Stations Fiction include: "One Million Cows" by Manuel Rivas, "Polaroid" by Suso de Toro and "Soundcheck: Tales from the Balkan Conflict" by Miguel-Anxo Murado.