Cuerpo y prótesis

by Juan José Millás

Cuerpo y prótesis reún una selección de artículos y reportajes que Juan José Millás ha publicado en distintos medios en los dos últimos años. Millás desmonta en ellos la superficialidad de la vida cotidiana en el Estado de bienestar y denuncia con humor e imaginación desbordantes los tópicos de nuestra cultura.

319 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Juan José Millás is a Spanish writer and winner of the 1990 Premio Nadal. He was born in Valencia and has spent most of his life in Madrid where he studied Philosophy and Literature at the Universidad Complutense.

His first novel was influenced by Julio Cortázar and consequently shows the influence of the then-prevalent literary experimentalism, as well as the uncertainty of a fledgling author. Although very original, his second book, Cerbero son las sombras (1975), obtained the Premio Sésamo and received a positive critical response.

Thanks to an enthusiastic member of the judges panel for the Premio Sésamo, Juan García Hortelano, he was able to publish Visión del ahogado (1977) and El jardín vacío (The empty garden) (1981) with the prestigious publisher Alfaguara. But his most popular novel was Papel mojado (1983), an assignment for a publisher of young adult literature that was a commercial success and continues to sell well. Simultaneously, he began to publish articles in the Spanish press with great success, so he left the employment of the Iberian press and now makes a living as a journalist and author.

In his numerous works, which are mostly psychological and introspective, any daily fact can become a fantastic event. He created his own personal literary genre, the articuento, in which an everyday story is transformed into a fantasy that allows the reader to see reality more critically. His weekly columns in El País have generated a great number of followers who appreciate the subtlety and originality of his point of view in dealing with current events, as well as his commitment to social justice and the quality of his writing. On the program La Ventana, on the channel Ser, he has a time slot (Fridays at 4:00) in which he encourages viewers to send short accounts about words from the dictionary. Currently, he is constructing a glossary, within which these accounts have a large role. His works have been translated into 23 languages, among them: English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch. In his 2006 novel, titled Laura y Julio, we find his principal obsessions expressed: the problem of identity, symmetry, other inhabitable spaces within our space, love, fidelity, and jealousy.

Reviews

[María Greene F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lo leí hace años, lo acabo de reencontrar. Es una selección de artículos cortos muy ingeniosos, a veces soñadores, a veces divertidísimos, muy observadores de la vida diaria. Y hablan de todo, del destino de los Grimaldi, del borracho del barrio, de qué harían las personas que no tienen manos, de Freud, de cuando se vota por primera vez, etcétera.

Esa vez me gustó mucho, pero no me dejó nada... nada más que la sensación de haberlo disfrutado. Y ahora que lo releo (re-hojeo) me pasa lo mismo. Tal vez porque, aunque agudo y simpático... es tan cotidiano, tan. Es como cuando uno sale con amigos, y pela, y se ríe, y después no se acuerda de nada de lo que se habló, sino que solo de la complicidad y de las risas.

Igual creo que lo voy a reubicar en mi velador, para cuando me cuesta el sueño. O para el baño. Jijiji.


Update: 2023, lo subí a cuatro estrellas porque releyéndolo la verdad es que es súper entretenido.