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Cosas vivas
Cuatro jóvenes españoles (uno de ellos, el narrador, de origen argelino) viajan un verano hasta el sur de Francia para ganar algo de dinero en la vendimia, pero finalmente, después de una serie de peripecias tan patéticas como divertidas, acaban empleándose como temporeros en una de esas empresas biotecnológicas que explotan desde hace décadas el mundo agrario y que, según ciertas teorías, acabarán por arruinarlo del todo. Alta y Baja Cultura, Bolaño y el punk, filosofía y terror, crítica social sin maniqueísmos… Un sinfín de sonidos y conceptos resuenan en estas páginas unas veces apocalípticas (como en Soylent Green, aquella película de ciencia ficción de Richard Fleischer y Charlton Heston) y otras falsamente ingenuas. Una combinación tan poderosa como arriesgada que, sin embargo, logra hacer visible la amenaza que ocultan algunas capas de la realidad. «Lo real es un territorio salvaje, una selva o un desierto, un lugar del que no se puede hacer un mapa», escribe el propio autor.
160 pages, Paperback
First published November 14, 2018
56 people are currently reading
3973 people want to read
About the author
Munir Hachemi
16 books52 followersMunir Hachemi (born 1989) is a Spanish writer. He was born in Madrid to an Algerian father and studied Spanish at university.
He also obtained a master's degree in Latin American studies. His fiction appeared initially in fanzines under the aegis of the Escritores Bárbaros collective. His first novel Cosas vivas appeared in 2018.
In 2021, he was named by Granta magazine as one of the most promising young Spanish-language writers in the world.
(source: Wikipedia)
He also obtained a master's degree in Latin American studies. His fiction appeared initially in fanzines under the aegis of the Escritores Bárbaros collective. His first novel Cosas vivas appeared in 2018.
In 2021, he was named by Granta magazine as one of the most promising young Spanish-language writers in the world.
(source: Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 243 reviews
October 27, 2025
Stylistically, obsessed. Love the narrator, love the feral, linguistic don't-give-a-fuckness, yet being able to retain so much artistic control. I want to read everything else Hachemi writes. He translated Shuang Xuetao's work from Chinese to Spanish as well which is extremely 'cool' and brilliant (needless to say). RTC later.
‘Clausewitz claims that the best and most enduring way to unite human beings is to create a common enemy. In Watchmen, Alan Moore posits the existence of a superior form of intelligence that is watching us and decides the only way to end war on Earth (the book is a bit more modest than that; they'd have been happy just to end the Cold War, which is a metaphor all the same) is to make up an extra-terrestrial enemy against which all humans can band together—a list of factors that would make a group of people join forces: shame, fear, a common enemy, xenophobia. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe deep inside each one of these things lurks something dark and unknowable whose own indeterminacy binds them into a cohesive force.’
October 12, 2024
What does keeping or not keeping a journal mean? Do things only happen because we write about them? Or do we limit the things that happen by writing them down? Because writing in itself is 'limiting' It can never encompass the 'all'. Angles change, light changes, the words left behind say a lot by their absence and how can we transmit all that?
Transmitting, sharing, showing, being a witness that is why we write.
Hachemi lays down the horrific bare truth for us here.
Can he transmit the horror of this truth? He tries and does succeed. Did he 'transmit' the 'all' we can never say...............
Horror question though - If we do take onboard the truth that Hachemi writes about, what are we going to do about it????????????????
An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.
Transmitting, sharing, showing, being a witness that is why we write.
Hachemi lays down the horrific bare truth for us here.
"because horror is a soft, sticky thing - never effusive, never a bang."
Can he transmit the horror of this truth? He tries and does succeed. Did he 'transmit' the 'all' we can never say...............
"storytelling - I realize now that G was right - is something we do on instinct while the world falls to pieces around us.
Horror question though - If we do take onboard the truth that Hachemi writes about, what are we going to do about it????????????????
An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.
October 17, 2024
‘In the postmodern age, horror is not a holocaust, but something far more intimate and painstaking.’
Four Spanish grad students travel to the South of France in search of that ever-elusive “life experience”, capital for their artistic pursuits. Instead, they find the grape season delayed and are put to work with flesh and shit and feathers.
A summer of youthful escapades devolves into an ecological horror of sorts, as the young men find themselves at the heart of an exploitative and shady agricultural industry.
Hachemi warns us from the jump that there are no allegories, no metaphors. The blood that covers everything is exactly that. The diary he has kept of this period is recounted to us—but what has been lost or gained with time? Can the reality of horror be truly communicated?
A work of meta-fiction (a great addition to my recent binge of what I'm dubbing 'fictional autofiction' joining Brat and The Shards) that meditates on what constitutes fiction; lush with literary and scholarly discussion that mesh incredibly well with the narrative.
A novella on politics, writing, exploitation and Europe. Of course it's a horror...
Four Spanish grad students travel to the South of France in search of that ever-elusive “life experience”, capital for their artistic pursuits. Instead, they find the grape season delayed and are put to work with flesh and shit and feathers.
A summer of youthful escapades devolves into an ecological horror of sorts, as the young men find themselves at the heart of an exploitative and shady agricultural industry.
Hachemi warns us from the jump that there are no allegories, no metaphors. The blood that covers everything is exactly that. The diary he has kept of this period is recounted to us—but what has been lost or gained with time? Can the reality of horror be truly communicated?
A work of meta-fiction (a great addition to my recent binge of what I'm dubbing 'fictional autofiction' joining Brat and The Shards) that meditates on what constitutes fiction; lush with literary and scholarly discussion that mesh incredibly well with the narrative.
A novella on politics, writing, exploitation and Europe. Of course it's a horror...
June 4, 2024
The blurb for this short novel says it is about Spanish graduates who travel to France for the grape harvest only to find themselves working on an industrial chicken farm). It sounds horrific but that certainly doesn't give the whole story.
Written by the character of Munir in journal form the novel tells the story of the four young men's troubles almost from the moment they arrive in France. What sounded like an idyllic post-grad summer in the fields in France quickly turns sour as they learn there will be no call for their services, the grape harvest being so pitiful that year. But yes, there is work, on a chicken farm. Backbreaking, soul-destroying, possibly illegal work but still...
The young men are typical students - they like getting drunk, getting high, not doing the washing (everything stinks of chicken shit), causing mayhem and not paying their bills. And they do all this on a family campsite.
Munir Hachem slews between the horror of the chicken farm (which turns the fictional Munir vegan), the insane antics of the young men back at the campsite and the shocking regularity of deaths that seem to occur amongst fellow workers. They resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery but they are utterly inept - a fact they seem to forget the moment someone lights a joint.
I flew through this book. It's immensely readable and Hachem promises there are no metaphors or allegories. Excellent. I'd love to read more by this author.
Thank you to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy.
Written by the character of Munir in journal form the novel tells the story of the four young men's troubles almost from the moment they arrive in France. What sounded like an idyllic post-grad summer in the fields in France quickly turns sour as they learn there will be no call for their services, the grape harvest being so pitiful that year. But yes, there is work, on a chicken farm. Backbreaking, soul-destroying, possibly illegal work but still...
The young men are typical students - they like getting drunk, getting high, not doing the washing (everything stinks of chicken shit), causing mayhem and not paying their bills. And they do all this on a family campsite.
Munir Hachem slews between the horror of the chicken farm (which turns the fictional Munir vegan), the insane antics of the young men back at the campsite and the shocking regularity of deaths that seem to occur amongst fellow workers. They resolve to get to the bottom of the mystery but they are utterly inept - a fact they seem to forget the moment someone lights a joint.
I flew through this book. It's immensely readable and Hachem promises there are no metaphors or allegories. Excellent. I'd love to read more by this author.
Thank you to Netgalley and Fitzcarraldo for the advance review copy.
January 31, 2024
4.5 stars. One of my most anticipated books of the year and an incredibly constructed book. It explores not only the nature of writing and its relationship to memory, but the connection between the horrors and experience of reality, and how we choose to tell them as a story.
Living Things is about four friends who decide to drive all the way from Madrid to the south of France in order to pick grapes for the summer and earn enough money to cover them for the next year of their university course. When they get there, they find the campsite is a complete nightmare. Their caravan has no wheels and only two beds to sleep in and they are surrounded by uninviting neighbours. When they go to the agency to find work they are told there is no grape harvest this year and instead they are carted off to an industrial farm to catch and vaccinate chickens, and to fertilize strange looking crops. The work is horrific, tiring and never-ending but the four friends never speak of it. Instead they become slowly more depressed and desensitized to the work, questioning the real jobs of those around them as it becomes apparent something a lot more sinister is going on beneath their noses.
I loved the literary references and the discussions on what makes a story, and how the constant insistence that Munir was doing nothing but sharing his truth - not creating but telling - created a sense of mistrust and unreliability from the get-go and through the rest of the book. The prologue was particularly powerful in setting up the horror in a really meta-fictional way. He says things along the lines of "when I say everything was covered in blood, I mean everything was covered in blood, it's not a symbol for anything bigger", and these parts really send a chill through me and got me wondering about the unspoken horrors of the novel which weren't written down. It becomes more apparent through the book that Munir is telling us everything from memory and I can't help but think about the things he might have deliberately left out or forgotten about because they were too horrific for him to share. The use of the Hemingway iceberg theory was used in a way I've not seen it spoken about before and I loved the characters musings on the nature of writing and short story telling, and using their own ideas on it to analyse the book itself.
The novel shines in it's self-awareness and meta-fiction, whereas I was expecting more of the horror and claustrophobic feelings seen in books like Fever Dream (which does get a mention). The creepiness and horror aspect could have been dialled up to 11 but it was left very undeveloped which is where this book fell short. If you convince yourself to not read this book as a literary horror, which it's being marketed as, it's very good, but setting up the expectation of horror is where this book might let readers down as this is a novel more about writing, language and the gaps of language for me rather than outright literary horror. Objectively it is a very clever book and I think on a re-read I would love to annotate it and look at the writing in terms of Hemingway and Borges because there's so much to unpack in it. Would be great to see it on the International Booker list too.
I'd recommend this more to fans of Latin American classic fiction such as fans of Borges, Cortazar and Bolano rather than horror fans as it speaks more to this generation of writing than it does to Latin America's new wave of horror fiction. I enjoy how it has tried to blend the two but I think slightly more literary horror in this novel would've made it an absolute triumph for me.
Living Things is about four friends who decide to drive all the way from Madrid to the south of France in order to pick grapes for the summer and earn enough money to cover them for the next year of their university course. When they get there, they find the campsite is a complete nightmare. Their caravan has no wheels and only two beds to sleep in and they are surrounded by uninviting neighbours. When they go to the agency to find work they are told there is no grape harvest this year and instead they are carted off to an industrial farm to catch and vaccinate chickens, and to fertilize strange looking crops. The work is horrific, tiring and never-ending but the four friends never speak of it. Instead they become slowly more depressed and desensitized to the work, questioning the real jobs of those around them as it becomes apparent something a lot more sinister is going on beneath their noses.
I loved the literary references and the discussions on what makes a story, and how the constant insistence that Munir was doing nothing but sharing his truth - not creating but telling - created a sense of mistrust and unreliability from the get-go and through the rest of the book. The prologue was particularly powerful in setting up the horror in a really meta-fictional way. He says things along the lines of "when I say everything was covered in blood, I mean everything was covered in blood, it's not a symbol for anything bigger", and these parts really send a chill through me and got me wondering about the unspoken horrors of the novel which weren't written down. It becomes more apparent through the book that Munir is telling us everything from memory and I can't help but think about the things he might have deliberately left out or forgotten about because they were too horrific for him to share. The use of the Hemingway iceberg theory was used in a way I've not seen it spoken about before and I loved the characters musings on the nature of writing and short story telling, and using their own ideas on it to analyse the book itself.
The novel shines in it's self-awareness and meta-fiction, whereas I was expecting more of the horror and claustrophobic feelings seen in books like Fever Dream (which does get a mention). The creepiness and horror aspect could have been dialled up to 11 but it was left very undeveloped which is where this book fell short. If you convince yourself to not read this book as a literary horror, which it's being marketed as, it's very good, but setting up the expectation of horror is where this book might let readers down as this is a novel more about writing, language and the gaps of language for me rather than outright literary horror. Objectively it is a very clever book and I think on a re-read I would love to annotate it and look at the writing in terms of Hemingway and Borges because there's so much to unpack in it. Would be great to see it on the International Booker list too.
I'd recommend this more to fans of Latin American classic fiction such as fans of Borges, Cortazar and Bolano rather than horror fans as it speaks more to this generation of writing than it does to Latin America's new wave of horror fiction. I enjoy how it has tried to blend the two but I think slightly more literary horror in this novel would've made it an absolute triumph for me.
October 29, 2025
shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize
Monday, 29 July
I’ve made some money and gone vegan. We’ve been here for three weeks, yet the implications of this job only sank in this morning. In the postmodern age, horror is not a holocaust, but something far more intimate and painstaking. I’ve reread some of my journal entries and get the sense horror may actually be a metaphor for something else.
Living Things is Julia Sanchez’s translation of Cosas vivas by Munir Hachemi.
The novel is based on a real-life trip from Spain to France the author took in his early 20s with three friends, G., Alejandro (Alex) and Ernesto, originally with the plan of working on the grape harvest. Three of the four also had plans to turn their experiences into literary texts - from an interview:
However due to a bad harvest, there is no work picking grapes and the author/narrator and his friends are sucked into the world of factory farming, first battery hens and then later genetically modified plants. And a world of both zero-hours type contracts, poor working conditions and the mysterious death of some of their co-workers.
This is a self-aware text, the author insisting on the reality, without embellishment, of the story he tells while simulteneously adding meta-fictional commentary rooted in literary fiction, particularly that of Latin America. Even the idea of using the road-trip experience to derive literature comes from aphorisms he has collated from various authors:
With time and the proliferation of notes I jotted down in journals, diaries, and scraps of paper, I developed my own decalogue of decalogues about experience as literary capital:
I. A short-story writer should be brave. Drop everything and dive in headfirst.
II. Make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.
III. Remember that writing isn’t for cowards, but also that being brave isn’t the same as not feeling afraid; being brave is feeling afraid and sticking it out, taking charge, going all in.
IV. Don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve opened your eyes underwater, unless you’ve screamed underwater with your eyes wide open. Also, don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve burned your fingers, unless you’ve put them under the hot water tap and said, ‘Ahhh! This is much better than not getting burned at all.’
V. Be in love with your own life.
VI. What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you’ve been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.
VII. Try living abroad.
VIII. You’ve got to fuck a great many women / beautiful women / […] / drink more and more beer / […] attend the racetrack at least once.
IX. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.
X. People in a novel, not skilfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him.
The writers behind this advice – in strict disorder – are: Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, Roberto Bolaño, Charles Bukowski, Hernán Casciari, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Augusto Monterroso. (Exercise: draw a line between each author and his advice.) As might be expected, all ten authors are men. In our culture, entrepreneurship, a spirit for adventure, and self-advertising are qualities reserved to the male species.
As for the exercise, the first is Bolaño, the second Monterroso and the rest are left as an exercise for the reader of this review.
Similarly the chapter names:
ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
LOS COMBATIENTES, OR THE FIGHTERS
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
DEATH AND THE COMPASS
JOURNEY BACK TO THE SOURCE
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
are the titles, in English translation, of novels by Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Desnoes, Cristina Morales, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Kurt Vonnegut respectively (Morales novel as yet untranslated hence the “Or” in the chapter title, and Vonnegut’s of course written in English).
The narration is largely in journal form, an example entry reading - with Piglia's ‘¿cómo narrar el horror de los hechos reales?’ a key motivation for the text:
Sunday, 14 July
I read Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory from start to finish. An unexpected surprise. It’s a social novel where the main character – a guy – takes us through the ins and outs of the artistic field; there is no anecdote outside the field of cultural production (exactly!). The book was recommended by my ex-girlfriend Mónica, now a close friend. Her current boyfriend recommended it to her. I consider ringing her but don’t actually want to; besides, it’d be expensive and I’m not sure she’s read the book yet. Instead I call Marta, my current girlfriend, and realize I don’t have a lot to share. I say things are all right; I have no idea if she can tell it isn’t true. My mission to obtain experience, as I referred to it, has been a failure. I have a new understanding of Piglia’s famous question: how to narrate the horror of real events?
We’re running out of food.
Or the entry that opens my review, written as the horrors of the experience sink in.
The UK publisher bills this as “a literary eco-thriller, a punk-like blend of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream”. And the author/narrator also references both works:
Before starting a story, I always reached for one on the shelf. Depending on what I wanted to write, on the genre and tone, I might pull out Ficciones or The Savage Detectives or The Past or Historia Argentina or Fever Dream or Pequeña flor . Those and a handful of other volumes were the ones that inspired me, or better still, saturated me. They weren’t my top ten so much as books that made me want to write (what a feeling, wanting to write) and warmed up my brain (warm up in the sense of a runner who limbers up their muscles before running the biggest race of their lives).
However the comparison to Schweblin is more notable for the contrast than for the similarities. Whereas her novel was genuinely horrifying (one of only a handful of novels I have read that literally gave me nightmares) and firmly occupied the middle-ground of Todorov's "the fantastic", here there is a relatively benign explanation for the deaths and certain other happenings, as the author/narrator acknowledges:
Reality always fails writers, and back then three out of the four of us thought ourselves writers. There was always Story B, even though it turned out to be nothing like any of the versions we could have come up with. Throughout the past week, on our drives in the Suzuki Swift and during down-time at le camping , we’d hashed out several conspiracies, discussed the relationship between the antibiotic shots, les champignons, the genetically modified maize and the high incidence of cancer in the West, offered incest and rape as explanations for the family ties between Hank Scorpio and Élodie, and concluded that everyone who found out about the link between the chickens and the corn was wished away with Muhammad’s help; in short, we had invented a Story B that wound up as a cover for Story C, which is the real story, the story Abdelkader told us and that I translated for my friends and for the Catalans and turned out to be far less surprising but also infinitely worse, because horror is a soft, sticky thing – never effusive, never a bang. There was no mystery, no case, and therefore no novel.
On the political nature of the work, the topic of the meat industry has been done rather better including by other Fitzcarraldo novels. And a novel about the exploitation of labour in the capitalist system would be more resonant if it wasn’t written from the perspective of a group of feckless middle-class students, looking for summer work, to top up the amount they already get from their parents, to finance an overseas road-trip, one they ultimately mean as material for a literary work.
Worthwhile - 3 stars (3.5 rounded down)
Monday, 29 July
I’ve made some money and gone vegan. We’ve been here for three weeks, yet the implications of this job only sank in this morning. In the postmodern age, horror is not a holocaust, but something far more intimate and painstaking. I’ve reread some of my journal entries and get the sense horror may actually be a metaphor for something else.
Living Things is Julia Sanchez’s translation of Cosas vivas by Munir Hachemi.
The novel is based on a real-life trip from Spain to France the author took in his early 20s with three friends, G., Alejandro (Alex) and Ernesto, originally with the plan of working on the grape harvest. Three of the four also had plans to turn their experiences into literary texts - from an interview:
It was a shared project between three of the protagonists. The idea was that each of us would write a text, of whatever genre, about the trip we had made together, and then publish a volume with the three texts. G began a story several times that he finally destroyed. Alex ended up writing a science fiction novel about delivery men in China, and l Cosas vivas. I have always thought that this story perfectly defines the three of us. Even for the one who didn’t write anything.
However due to a bad harvest, there is no work picking grapes and the author/narrator and his friends are sucked into the world of factory farming, first battery hens and then later genetically modified plants. And a world of both zero-hours type contracts, poor working conditions and the mysterious death of some of their co-workers.
This is a self-aware text, the author insisting on the reality, without embellishment, of the story he tells while simulteneously adding meta-fictional commentary rooted in literary fiction, particularly that of Latin America. Even the idea of using the road-trip experience to derive literature comes from aphorisms he has collated from various authors:
With time and the proliferation of notes I jotted down in journals, diaries, and scraps of paper, I developed my own decalogue of decalogues about experience as literary capital:
I. A short-story writer should be brave. Drop everything and dive in headfirst.
II. Make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.
III. Remember that writing isn’t for cowards, but also that being brave isn’t the same as not feeling afraid; being brave is feeling afraid and sticking it out, taking charge, going all in.
IV. Don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve opened your eyes underwater, unless you’ve screamed underwater with your eyes wide open. Also, don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve burned your fingers, unless you’ve put them under the hot water tap and said, ‘Ahhh! This is much better than not getting burned at all.’
V. Be in love with your own life.
VI. What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you’ve been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.
VII. Try living abroad.
VIII. You’ve got to fuck a great many women / beautiful women / […] / drink more and more beer / […] attend the racetrack at least once.
IX. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.
X. People in a novel, not skilfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him.
The writers behind this advice – in strict disorder – are: Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, Roberto Bolaño, Charles Bukowski, Hernán Casciari, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Augusto Monterroso. (Exercise: draw a line between each author and his advice.) As might be expected, all ten authors are men. In our culture, entrepreneurship, a spirit for adventure, and self-advertising are qualities reserved to the male species.
As for the exercise, the first is Bolaño, the second Monterroso and the rest are left as an exercise for the reader of this review.
Similarly the chapter names:
ARTIFICIAL RESPIRATION
MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT
LOS COMBATIENTES, OR THE FIGHTERS
CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD
DEATH AND THE COMPASS
JOURNEY BACK TO THE SOURCE
SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE
are the titles, in English translation, of novels by Ricardo Piglia, Edmundo Desnoes, Cristina Morales, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Kurt Vonnegut respectively (Morales novel as yet untranslated hence the “Or” in the chapter title, and Vonnegut’s of course written in English).
The narration is largely in journal form, an example entry reading - with Piglia's ‘¿cómo narrar el horror de los hechos reales?’ a key motivation for the text:
Sunday, 14 July
I read Houellebecq’s The Map and the Territory from start to finish. An unexpected surprise. It’s a social novel where the main character – a guy – takes us through the ins and outs of the artistic field; there is no anecdote outside the field of cultural production (exactly!). The book was recommended by my ex-girlfriend Mónica, now a close friend. Her current boyfriend recommended it to her. I consider ringing her but don’t actually want to; besides, it’d be expensive and I’m not sure she’s read the book yet. Instead I call Marta, my current girlfriend, and realize I don’t have a lot to share. I say things are all right; I have no idea if she can tell it isn’t true. My mission to obtain experience, as I referred to it, has been a failure. I have a new understanding of Piglia’s famous question: how to narrate the horror of real events?
We’re running out of food.
Or the entry that opens my review, written as the horrors of the experience sink in.
The UK publisher bills this as “a literary eco-thriller, a punk-like blend of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream”. And the author/narrator also references both works:
Before starting a story, I always reached for one on the shelf. Depending on what I wanted to write, on the genre and tone, I might pull out Ficciones or The Savage Detectives or The Past or Historia Argentina or Fever Dream or Pequeña flor . Those and a handful of other volumes were the ones that inspired me, or better still, saturated me. They weren’t my top ten so much as books that made me want to write (what a feeling, wanting to write) and warmed up my brain (warm up in the sense of a runner who limbers up their muscles before running the biggest race of their lives).
However the comparison to Schweblin is more notable for the contrast than for the similarities. Whereas her novel was genuinely horrifying (one of only a handful of novels I have read that literally gave me nightmares) and firmly occupied the middle-ground of Todorov's "the fantastic", here there is a relatively benign explanation for the deaths and certain other happenings, as the author/narrator acknowledges:
Reality always fails writers, and back then three out of the four of us thought ourselves writers. There was always Story B, even though it turned out to be nothing like any of the versions we could have come up with. Throughout the past week, on our drives in the Suzuki Swift and during down-time at le camping , we’d hashed out several conspiracies, discussed the relationship between the antibiotic shots, les champignons, the genetically modified maize and the high incidence of cancer in the West, offered incest and rape as explanations for the family ties between Hank Scorpio and Élodie, and concluded that everyone who found out about the link between the chickens and the corn was wished away with Muhammad’s help; in short, we had invented a Story B that wound up as a cover for Story C, which is the real story, the story Abdelkader told us and that I translated for my friends and for the Catalans and turned out to be far less surprising but also infinitely worse, because horror is a soft, sticky thing – never effusive, never a bang. There was no mystery, no case, and therefore no novel.
On the political nature of the work, the topic of the meat industry has been done rather better including by other Fitzcarraldo novels. And a novel about the exploitation of labour in the capitalist system would be more resonant if it wasn’t written from the perspective of a group of feckless middle-class students, looking for summer work, to top up the amount they already get from their parents, to finance an overseas road-trip, one they ultimately mean as material for a literary work.
Worthwhile - 3 stars (3.5 rounded down)
March 5, 2025
Oh, to be a lout in southern France...
I have a review of this out now at Minor Literature[s].
I have a review of this out now at Minor Literature[s].
August 4, 2024
76th book of 2024.
Within something like 14 pages, I messaged Alan and told him to read it. Hachemi starts this thin book with some great metafiction, ideas on fiction/short stories, on "his" hate of Hemingway, for example, among other things. I was quoting every few lines.
And further yet some advice taken from a number of writers,
Even the chapter titles are literary. Chapter IV is called 'A Chronicle of a Death Foretold' and Chapter VII is called 'Slaughterhouse-Five'.
But after Munir starts the 'story', we realise the book is about capitalism, exploitation (namely of animals for pleasure and money), veganism, and fiction itself, of course. I adored the first half and Hachemi's voice. I liked the rest of the book but not nearly as much. That said, I'm a fan, and will be following more of his translations when they hit the UK (presumably through Fitzcarraldo again, who also supply greedy me with Agustín Fernández Mallo translations). A love-letter to Latin American lit, Bolaño, who is named dropped often, as is Borges. At 114 pages, it's hard not to recommend it for what it's worth. Spanish-written fiction is overtaking Japanese lit as some of my favourite to read.
Within something like 14 pages, I messaged Alan and told him to read it. Hachemi starts this thin book with some great metafiction, ideas on fiction/short stories, on "his" hate of Hemingway, for example, among other things. I was quoting every few lines.
Bolaño, for example - reading Bolaño being one of the unwritten commandments - declared that 'a short-story writer should be brave' and drive in headfirst. Piglia claimed his lifestyle defined his literary style. Augusto Monterroso urged young writers to 'make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.'
And further yet some advice taken from a number of writers,
I. A short-story writer should be brave. Drop everything and dive in headfirst.
II. Make the most of every disadvantage, whether insomnia, imprisonment or poverty; the first gave us Baudelaire, the second Silvio Pellico, and the third all your writer friends; avoid sleeping like Homer, living easily like Byron, or making as much money as Bloy.
III. Remember that writing isn’t for cowards, but also that being brave isn’t the same as not feeling afraid; being brave is feeling afraid and sticking it out, taking charge, going all in.
IV. Don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve opened your eyes underwater, unless you’ve screamed underwater with your eyes wide open. Also, don’t start writing poetry unless you’ve burned your fingers, unless you’ve put them under the hot water tap and said, ‘Ahhh! This is much better than not getting burned at all.’
V. Be in love with your own life.
VI. What sets a novelist apart is having a unique worldview as well as something to say about it. So try living a little first. Not just in books or in bars, but out there, in real life. Wait until you’ve been scarred by the world, until it has left its mark.
VII. Try living abroad.
VIII. You’ve got to fuck a great many women / beautiful women / […] / drink more and more beer / […] attend the racetrack at least once.
IX. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner.
X. People in a novel, not skilfully constructed characters, must be projected from the writer’s assimilated experience, from his knowledge, from his head, from his heart and from all there is of him.
The writers behind this advice – in strict disorder – are: Javier Cercas, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Auster, Roberto Bolaño, Charles Bukowski, Hernán Casciari, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Augusto Monterroso. (Exercise: draw a line between each author and his advice.)
Even the chapter titles are literary. Chapter IV is called 'A Chronicle of a Death Foretold' and Chapter VII is called 'Slaughterhouse-Five'.
But after Munir starts the 'story', we realise the book is about capitalism, exploitation (namely of animals for pleasure and money), veganism, and fiction itself, of course. I adored the first half and Hachemi's voice. I liked the rest of the book but not nearly as much. That said, I'm a fan, and will be following more of his translations when they hit the UK (presumably through Fitzcarraldo again, who also supply greedy me with Agustín Fernández Mallo translations). A love-letter to Latin American lit, Bolaño, who is named dropped often, as is Borges. At 114 pages, it's hard not to recommend it for what it's worth. Spanish-written fiction is overtaking Japanese lit as some of my favourite to read.
July 9, 2024
4,5
This is so many things at once: eco-thriller, road novel, diary, auto-fiction, postmodern literature study, political novella...quote unique and all of it in just 140 pages. I flew through it.
Munir and three friends drive from Madrid to Southern France to spend the summer earning some money picking grapes. But the harvest has failed and instead the young Spaniards end up working in (or better: being exploited by) the horrendous factory farming industry. When colleagues start dying and a multinational biotech corporation seems involved things become even more sinister.
I enjoyed this on many levels. The offhanded yet clever way the story is told, the realistic descriptions, the matter-of-fact style, the interesting references and observations on storytelling.
Very highly recommended!
This is so many things at once: eco-thriller, road novel, diary, auto-fiction, postmodern literature study, political novella...quote unique and all of it in just 140 pages. I flew through it.
Munir and three friends drive from Madrid to Southern France to spend the summer earning some money picking grapes. But the harvest has failed and instead the young Spaniards end up working in (or better: being exploited by) the horrendous factory farming industry. When colleagues start dying and a multinational biotech corporation seems involved things become even more sinister.
I enjoyed this on many levels. The offhanded yet clever way the story is told, the realistic descriptions, the matter-of-fact style, the interesting references and observations on storytelling.
Very highly recommended!
November 28, 2018
Brillante. Estoy alucinada con el hecho de que este sea el debut literario de Munir Hachemi, ya que la calidad es inmejorable para una primera novela. El formato me parece de lo más interesante: el autor revisita sus recuerdos de un viaje al sur de Francia, a través de la reflexión y a través de fragmentos del diario que conserva de entonces. Una trama sencilla cargada de emociones muy diversas, muy bien reflejadas en los caracteres de cada uno de los cuatro personajes. El estilo me ha parecido exquisito, las divagaciones sobre literatura muy acertadas. Lo he leído a un ritmo frenético y me he sumergido de lleno en el infierno del verano en Aire sur l'Adour.
May 20, 2025
Wild book. Might make a good A24 movie.
"Horror is a soft, sticky thing – never effusive, never a bang."
Four Spanish graduates travel to France to assist in the grape harvest and collect "experience," but they end up sleeping on a slowly deteriorating campsite and facing the horrors of the modern food industry and the exploitation of seasonal workers. This little thing of a book is a social horror story with a tinge of weird, a group of unhinged protagonists, and some meta-literary excursions.
Be warned: Animal excrement, drug abuse, and generally unlikable characters. Yet somehow, it was still fun.
"Horror is a soft, sticky thing – never effusive, never a bang."
Four Spanish graduates travel to France to assist in the grape harvest and collect "experience," but they end up sleeping on a slowly deteriorating campsite and facing the horrors of the modern food industry and the exploitation of seasonal workers. This little thing of a book is a social horror story with a tinge of weird, a group of unhinged protagonists, and some meta-literary excursions.
Be warned: Animal excrement, drug abuse, and generally unlikable characters. Yet somehow, it was still fun.
February 27, 2025
what the fuck...read in one sitting and making me feel crazy. this is so good, the kind of thing that makes me want to grab the author by the shoulders and shake them while screaming HOW DO YOU DO IT.
“Ever since they’ve known each other Munir has had to make excuses for G – with his parents, partners, teachers, the police, in other words, every authority figure a person might encounter in their lifetime. But Munir laughs a lot with G. He visits him in his holding cell or at the hospital and accompanies him to disciplinary hearings at university; he pretends to everyone that he knows G’s secret language when the truth is he’s just his friend’s condition of possibility, the air beneath the wings of Kant’s dove.”
“Once again self-destruction became a way of resisting an enemy I knew to be undefeatable."
“Ever since they’ve known each other Munir has had to make excuses for G – with his parents, partners, teachers, the police, in other words, every authority figure a person might encounter in their lifetime. But Munir laughs a lot with G. He visits him in his holding cell or at the hospital and accompanies him to disciplinary hearings at university; he pretends to everyone that he knows G’s secret language when the truth is he’s just his friend’s condition of possibility, the air beneath the wings of Kant’s dove.”
“Once again self-destruction became a way of resisting an enemy I knew to be undefeatable."
February 23, 2025
the real story [...] turned out to be far less but also infinitely worse, because horror is a soft, sticky thing - never effusive, never a bang. There was no mystery, no case, and therefore no novel.
read half of this in the bookstore and then took it home to finish
what is most sinister is when the truths come to light and are revealed to be tragedies we already knew about the world, not any kind of new alien, conspiratorial or surreal horrors + exploitation that we make up to bury the simplest most likely explanation -all the more grim for its banal normality. just what we already know and do nothing about, like the 4 students who, when the next morning comes, simply pack up and go home
4.5
read half of this in the bookstore and then took it home to finish
what is most sinister is when the truths come to light and are revealed to be tragedies we already knew about the world, not any kind of new alien, conspiratorial or surreal horrors + exploitation that we make up to bury the simplest most likely explanation -all the more grim for its banal normality. just what we already know and do nothing about, like the 4 students who, when the next morning comes, simply pack up and go home
4.5
May 26, 2021
¿3,5 o 4?
Las tres estrellas se me quedan cortas a la hora de valorar Cosas Vivas, una novela en la que me adentré sin leer la sinopsis. Una estrategia adoptada tras el desencuentro en varias de mis últimas lecturas entre lo vendido y lo leído y que ha resultado especialmente acertada con esta novela, la primera de Munir Hachemi, ¡la primera!
Cosas vivas narra, a priori, las peripecias de cuatro jóvenes españoles que viajan en coche al sur de Francia durante el verano para ganar dinero en la vendimia, pero que terminan trabajando como temporeros en empresas biotecnológicas. Esa premisa bien podría ser el comienzo de una road movie o una historia disfrutona cualquiera y, sin embargo, la historia es todo menos disfrutona para sus protagonistas. Y esa fue una de las primeras cosas que me gustó de Cosas Vivas: no reconocer el lugar al que pensaba que me llevaría la novela.
Durante las primeras páginas la ingenuidad inicial de los cuatro protagonistas me resultó muy refrescante y compensó las reiteradas explicaciones del escritor y protagonista -Munir Hachemi- sobre cómo iba a enfrentarse a esta novela. Reconozco que la primera vez en la que expone su compromiso de escribir la historia como realmente ocurrió, sin artificios, compartiendo incluso algunos ejemplos para ilustrarlo, me ganó. La reiteración, sin embargo, me pareció innecesaria.
Dejando atrás esas primeras páginas la historia gana cuerpo. La realidad amenazante con la que se dan de bruces en Francia obliga a nuestros protagonistas a reaccionar y a nosotros, como lectores, a reflexionar sobre esta sociedad de consumo de la que somos parte, haciéndonos conscientes de lo que muchas veces tratamos de ignorar por comodidad. No voy a desvelar qué trabajos se ven obligados a realizar los chicos, pero si que lo hacen a través de empresas de contratación dudosas, con condiciones precarias que los obligan a malvivir y al servicio de esas grandes empresas biotecnológicas que explotan el mundo agrario. Y de como estos trabajos tiene consecuencias en su vida y les roban esa ingenuidad inicial.
Cosas Vivas es una novela que invita a la reflexión. Reflexión no solo sobre la amistad, la industria agroalimentaria o la precariedad, también sobre cómo plasmar la realidad sin permitir que la literatura se entrometa.
Las tres estrellas se me quedan cortas a la hora de valorar Cosas Vivas, una novela en la que me adentré sin leer la sinopsis. Una estrategia adoptada tras el desencuentro en varias de mis últimas lecturas entre lo vendido y lo leído y que ha resultado especialmente acertada con esta novela, la primera de Munir Hachemi, ¡la primera!
Cosas vivas narra, a priori, las peripecias de cuatro jóvenes españoles que viajan en coche al sur de Francia durante el verano para ganar dinero en la vendimia, pero que terminan trabajando como temporeros en empresas biotecnológicas. Esa premisa bien podría ser el comienzo de una road movie o una historia disfrutona cualquiera y, sin embargo, la historia es todo menos disfrutona para sus protagonistas. Y esa fue una de las primeras cosas que me gustó de Cosas Vivas: no reconocer el lugar al que pensaba que me llevaría la novela.
Durante las primeras páginas la ingenuidad inicial de los cuatro protagonistas me resultó muy refrescante y compensó las reiteradas explicaciones del escritor y protagonista -Munir Hachemi- sobre cómo iba a enfrentarse a esta novela. Reconozco que la primera vez en la que expone su compromiso de escribir la historia como realmente ocurrió, sin artificios, compartiendo incluso algunos ejemplos para ilustrarlo, me ganó. La reiteración, sin embargo, me pareció innecesaria.
Dejando atrás esas primeras páginas la historia gana cuerpo. La realidad amenazante con la que se dan de bruces en Francia obliga a nuestros protagonistas a reaccionar y a nosotros, como lectores, a reflexionar sobre esta sociedad de consumo de la que somos parte, haciéndonos conscientes de lo que muchas veces tratamos de ignorar por comodidad. No voy a desvelar qué trabajos se ven obligados a realizar los chicos, pero si que lo hacen a través de empresas de contratación dudosas, con condiciones precarias que los obligan a malvivir y al servicio de esas grandes empresas biotecnológicas que explotan el mundo agrario. Y de como estos trabajos tiene consecuencias en su vida y les roban esa ingenuidad inicial.
Cosas Vivas es una novela que invita a la reflexión. Reflexión no solo sobre la amistad, la industria agroalimentaria o la precariedad, también sobre cómo plasmar la realidad sin permitir que la literatura se entrometa.
July 2, 2024
*3/3.5 !?
Every single time a book is marketed as a blend between "x book" and "y book", you just know it's a lie.
The savage detectives??? Nowhere to be found in here; I mean, the author references Bolaño here and there, specifically in the parts of the book where the narrator reflects on the concept of "fiction" in novels, but that's all.
Still, this is an interesting novel about a group of four boys who decide to spend the summer in the south of France doing some work and making "experience".
The reality is pretty brutal compared to their expectations and their friendship is challenged by some difficult situations and dire events.
I liked it overall, but let's just say that I went into this book expecting something else, so maybe that's why I couldn't fully appreciate it.
Every single time a book is marketed as a blend between "x book" and "y book", you just know it's a lie.
The savage detectives??? Nowhere to be found in here; I mean, the author references Bolaño here and there, specifically in the parts of the book where the narrator reflects on the concept of "fiction" in novels, but that's all.
Still, this is an interesting novel about a group of four boys who decide to spend the summer in the south of France doing some work and making "experience".
The reality is pretty brutal compared to their expectations and their friendship is challenged by some difficult situations and dire events.
I liked it overall, but let's just say that I went into this book expecting something else, so maybe that's why I couldn't fully appreciate it.
June 5, 2019
Me ha encantado. Políticamente es de lo más interesante que he leído este año en narrativa, junto a Lectura Fácil e Ilska. Aporta. Espero leer más de Hachemi.
August 21, 2020
Abandonado. No puedo con la pedantería literaria. Para ser escritor no es necesario confirmar cada dos páginas que has leído a Borges.
August 25, 2024
A group of young friends from Spain go to the South of France to work the grape harvest, but alas, they enter the Twilight Zone instead. If I were one of the characters in this group, I would immediately get in the car and go back to Spain. But young people, because they are young, go on an adventure that they couldn't imagine in the first place. Nevertheless, it is one of the great Vegan works of literature. I would love to read more of Munir Hachemi.
(The edition I have read is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, but it seems Goodreads doesn't have it in its inventory, just the Kindle version and American/international publications.)
(The edition I have read is published by Fitzcarraldo Editions, but it seems Goodreads doesn't have it in its inventory, just the Kindle version and American/international publications.)
August 18, 2024
This short and enjoyable book tells the story of Munir, the author, himself, and three of his friends Alejandro, G and Ernesto, who, as young writers, decide to travel from Madrid and work in France for a summer, thereby gaining experience which they can relate to their literary work.
On arrival an agency fixes them up with work on the grape harvest, but bad weather washes it out, and they end up working in a variety of other jobs, in factories and processing animals.
It’s Hachemi’s first novel, and what he does really well is to create an underlying sense of unease. The four young men are at a stage in their lives, with summer jobs outside their country, where they are looking for a good time. So much so, that they initially ignore incidents around them that in other might sound alarm bells.
It deals with issues of class division, the dangers of following in the steps of literary heroes, and the dreary trudge of day to day life.
On arrival an agency fixes them up with work on the grape harvest, but bad weather washes it out, and they end up working in a variety of other jobs, in factories and processing animals.
It’s Hachemi’s first novel, and what he does really well is to create an underlying sense of unease. The four young men are at a stage in their lives, with summer jobs outside their country, where they are looking for a good time. So much so, that they initially ignore incidents around them that in other might sound alarm bells.
It deals with issues of class division, the dangers of following in the steps of literary heroes, and the dreary trudge of day to day life.
November 22, 2024
living things is a critique of the industrialized mass agricultural production system, the exploitation of oppressed, precarious, and malleable labor, often immigrant, and capitalism. (i love namedropping, i hope it caught your interest.) it’s also the story of a group of artsy friends, full of ideals, who head to south of france to spend a summer (supposedly) harvesting grapes and enjoying camping life.
this is a very short, compact, and rich novel. sometimes dark, it leans into the normalized horrors of everyday realities (ecological disasters, to only name one). it’s the kind of fiction you read casually but that turns out to be full of meaning, making you reflect on other serious themes. it’s brilliant, the prose is excellent and packed with literary references. the author’s voice is funny but exposes horrors, you can read between the lines.
highly recommended for fans of translated literature!
this is a very short, compact, and rich novel. sometimes dark, it leans into the normalized horrors of everyday realities (ecological disasters, to only name one). it’s the kind of fiction you read casually but that turns out to be full of meaning, making you reflect on other serious themes. it’s brilliant, the prose is excellent and packed with literary references. the author’s voice is funny but exposes horrors, you can read between the lines.
highly recommended for fans of translated literature!
June 3, 2022
muy increíble, de a ratos me hizo acordar mucho a distancia de rescate. podría hablar horas de los procedimientos del armado del relato pero eso lo voy a tener que hacer para la facultad así que me contengo. por ahora solo diré LEANLO no se van a arrepentir
October 5, 2025
3.75 ⭐️
it's the first days of october and the distinct, comforting, relieving chill of autumn has set in. and yet you still remember the unbearable, stifling heat of the summer months, the kind of heat that, one some days, seems to drive you to the edge of insanity.
so, you pick up a book, and out comes this stifling heat, like an utter oppression. it's the setting of the book, but i choose to read it as a metaphor, too. this is a book about abut the devastation of living things. it's a an eco-thriller, and a horror novel: a horror novel about about capitalism, exploitative labour, the cruelty of factory farming, poverty. it's also a fascinating piece of metafiction. it's very short, only 114 pages, but it packs a punch. i started it last night, and finished it this morning, and if you have the time i do recommend reading it in one or two sittings. the constriction at the heart of this demands to be felt in full force.
"In the pages after this preface, you may come across a sentence like 'everything is covered in blood'. If that happens, don't try to tease out any hidden meaning. I'm not saying that horror coats everything like a fine, invisible film; nor does the image signify sexual desire or the urge to kill. All you should understand is that everything is covered in blood. The snow, the gravel, the houses, the lamp posts. Everything. And not fresh blood either, but dry blood – extremely dry."
it's the first days of october and the distinct, comforting, relieving chill of autumn has set in. and yet you still remember the unbearable, stifling heat of the summer months, the kind of heat that, one some days, seems to drive you to the edge of insanity.
so, you pick up a book, and out comes this stifling heat, like an utter oppression. it's the setting of the book, but i choose to read it as a metaphor, too. this is a book about abut the devastation of living things. it's a an eco-thriller, and a horror novel: a horror novel about about capitalism, exploitative labour, the cruelty of factory farming, poverty. it's also a fascinating piece of metafiction. it's very short, only 114 pages, but it packs a punch. i started it last night, and finished it this morning, and if you have the time i do recommend reading it in one or two sittings. the constriction at the heart of this demands to be felt in full force.
December 2, 2025
η πραγματική φρίκη δεν έχει εντάσεις, μόνο ρουτίνα και μονοτονία
December 28, 2024
Keturi jauni ispanai išvaro į pietų Prancūziją uždarbiauti. Šiaip tik vienam iš jų tikrai reikia pinigų, o kiti labiau ieško nuotykių ir semiasi patirties, ypač pasakotojas, kuris nori būt rašytoju. Būtent todėl toliau ir gaunam skaityti jo kelionės dienoraštį.
Pirminis planas buvęs visai prancūziškas – raškyti vynuoges, bet atvykus paaiškėja, kad teks kęst smarvę pramoniniuose paukštynuose ir prakaituot eksperimentiniuose kukurūzų laukuose. Būsimasis rašytojas pakraupsta nuo žiauraus elgesio su paukščiais, dar ir pats netyčia vištai sulaužo sparną vakcinacijos metu, tad greit tampa veganu. Reikia dirbt ir naktimis, uždarbio kol kas nėr, ima baigtis maistas ir pinigai, neoveganui trūksta baltymų – patirties visi gauna sočiai. Maža, to darbo metu Kai Kas įvyksta.
Knygos pradžioje įdėta apmąstymų, kas yra istorijų pasakojimas ir pan., pvz., kad jei šitoj knygoj parašyta „viskas buvo iškruvinta“, tai tik tiek ir tenorėta pasakyti, o jokios Paslėptų Prasmių transliacijos čia nėra. Šiek tiek literatūrinių svarstymų, nuorodų ir žiupsnelį kairiosios kritikos gaunam ir tolesniame tekste – dalis jų man pasirodė pretenzingi ir nebūtini. Bet šiaip knyga įtraukė, tekstas geras, pabuvojau su jaunimu, prieš kokius 10 metų besisėmusiu gyvenimo patirties pietų Europoj.
Knygos anotacijoje nurodoma, kad čia esantis eko-trileris ar pan., bet nesu nieko panašaus skaitęs ir neįžiūrėjau, kad eko-komponentai (nelaimėliai paukščiai, kukurūzai) čia būtų baisiai svarbūs. Tiesa, pripažinsiu – skaitydamas pagavau save galvojant, kad ir toliau be foie gras kaip nors apsieisiu – tai gal autorius paslapčiom ir sustūmė man kažkokią papildomą vakciną.
Pirminis planas buvęs visai prancūziškas – raškyti vynuoges, bet atvykus paaiškėja, kad teks kęst smarvę pramoniniuose paukštynuose ir prakaituot eksperimentiniuose kukurūzų laukuose. Būsimasis rašytojas pakraupsta nuo žiauraus elgesio su paukščiais, dar ir pats netyčia vištai sulaužo sparną vakcinacijos metu, tad greit tampa veganu. Reikia dirbt ir naktimis, uždarbio kol kas nėr, ima baigtis maistas ir pinigai, neoveganui trūksta baltymų – patirties visi gauna sočiai. Maža, to darbo metu Kai Kas įvyksta.
Knygos pradžioje įdėta apmąstymų, kas yra istorijų pasakojimas ir pan., pvz., kad jei šitoj knygoj parašyta „viskas buvo iškruvinta“, tai tik tiek ir tenorėta pasakyti, o jokios Paslėptų Prasmių transliacijos čia nėra. Šiek tiek literatūrinių svarstymų, nuorodų ir žiupsnelį kairiosios kritikos gaunam ir tolesniame tekste – dalis jų man pasirodė pretenzingi ir nebūtini. Bet šiaip knyga įtraukė, tekstas geras, pabuvojau su jaunimu, prieš kokius 10 metų besisėmusiu gyvenimo patirties pietų Europoj.
Knygos anotacijoje nurodoma, kad čia esantis eko-trileris ar pan., bet nesu nieko panašaus skaitęs ir neįžiūrėjau, kad eko-komponentai (nelaimėliai paukščiai, kukurūzai) čia būtų baisiai svarbūs. Tiesa, pripažinsiu – skaitydamas pagavau save galvojant, kad ir toliau be foie gras kaip nors apsieisiu – tai gal autorius paslapčiom ir sustūmė man kažkokią papildomą vakciną.
August 4, 2024
As for the four of us: Synngate, AST and Aire-sur-l’Adour stretch out like a soft, delicate thing into both the future and the past. In a famous piece by Borges, he asserts that Kafka not only changed the face of the literature to come but also of the literature before him. Likewise, our stay in Aire changed not only our future (in obvious ways like my going vegan and Alejandro becoming a journalist) but also our past. There are no morals to real-life stories. Yet, if this story were to have one, it would go something like this: true horror does not know vitriol, only monotony and routine. I imagine the same applies to true happiness, except the other way round: making every minor detail shine, always operating on the microscopic level. For me that experience suffused everything with the smell of chicken and duck shit and turned every act into one described in a lost excerpt of a journal I never wrote. Some people view storytelling as a kind of therapy or a way of getting things off your chest. But that’s not true: at most, storytelling – I realize now that G was right – is something we do by instinct while the world falls to pieces around us.
The book reads like a self-help book for young men just starting out on the road to life, seeking a lot of experience. The four Spaniards depicted in this slim novella have just started out following their graduation and seek out the south of France as their place of ensconcement, firmly bent on the road to discipline their current lives by employing themselves in the grape harvest. But as things turn out to the contrary they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living on a campsite, where a general sense of menace unveils among its inhabitants in the form of antagonism for these four young Spaniards. What follows next is an arduous journey full of the hassle of finding employment under different firms and habitats, a withering critique of the consequences of capitalism, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven through the medium of literary thought and sharp satire.
Throughout the reading of this book brace yourselves for drives in a Suzuki Swift and time spent downtime at the campsite, where time infuses itself with hashing out several conspiracies, discussing the relationship between the antibiotic shots, les champignons, the genetically modified maize and the high incidence of cancer in the West, and finally jumping to the conclusion regarding those who found out about the link between the chickens and the corn, amongst other multifarious details.
Stylistically it was a fun read with the author's straightforward and direct style appealing to me the most. Every literary tactic employed in this novella makes for a breezy read till the end, which is in contrast to the start of the literary work that has the feel of a manual for self-improvement and discipline.
Overall, a nice and introspective read, highly recommended!
The book reads like a self-help book for young men just starting out on the road to life, seeking a lot of experience. The four Spaniards depicted in this slim novella have just started out following their graduation and seek out the south of France as their place of ensconcement, firmly bent on the road to discipline their current lives by employing themselves in the grape harvest. But as things turn out to the contrary they end up working on an industrial chicken farm and living on a campsite, where a general sense of menace unveils among its inhabitants in the form of antagonism for these four young Spaniards. What follows next is an arduous journey full of the hassle of finding employment under different firms and habitats, a withering critique of the consequences of capitalism, and the mass production of living things, all interwoven through the medium of literary thought and sharp satire.
Throughout the reading of this book brace yourselves for drives in a Suzuki Swift and time spent downtime at the campsite, where time infuses itself with hashing out several conspiracies, discussing the relationship between the antibiotic shots, les champignons, the genetically modified maize and the high incidence of cancer in the West, and finally jumping to the conclusion regarding those who found out about the link between the chickens and the corn, amongst other multifarious details.
Stylistically it was a fun read with the author's straightforward and direct style appealing to me the most. Every literary tactic employed in this novella makes for a breezy read till the end, which is in contrast to the start of the literary work that has the feel of a manual for self-improvement and discipline.
Overall, a nice and introspective read, highly recommended!
August 10, 2024
A man hits his head and “[t]he next moment he remembered that he remembered, and the moment after that he remembered that he remembered, and so he remained, trapped in an event, a memory, in a compact, anodyne, infinite moment.”
What better place to start than this anecdote: the summary of a short story published by our narrator before the events which form this novel’s cyclical remembering. The traumatic event is told after impact, changing the past and present which cushion it. Munir Hachemi suggests that, just as Borges once asserted that Kafka not only changed the face of literature to come but also of that which came before him, their experience of Synngate, AST and Aire sur l’Adour has a temporal sprawl.
As our narrator remarks: “Telling the truth, then, doesn’t mean exhausting reality (which is infinite) but laying down its reading conditions, those of the outside world, and weaving together all the unsaid things that make a journal tick.” Rather than a grand last sentence which might be subjected to the “interpretive violence” we would bestow on someone’s last words, here trauma is revealed through a monotony of shopping lists, misdirected violence, and chain-smoking.
Framed as a murder mystery, we eagerly await a conclusion to this story which, had we admitted it to ourselves, was solved from the very start.
What better place to start than this anecdote: the summary of a short story published by our narrator before the events which form this novel’s cyclical remembering. The traumatic event is told after impact, changing the past and present which cushion it. Munir Hachemi suggests that, just as Borges once asserted that Kafka not only changed the face of literature to come but also of that which came before him, their experience of Synngate, AST and Aire sur l’Adour has a temporal sprawl.
As our narrator remarks: “Telling the truth, then, doesn’t mean exhausting reality (which is infinite) but laying down its reading conditions, those of the outside world, and weaving together all the unsaid things that make a journal tick.” Rather than a grand last sentence which might be subjected to the “interpretive violence” we would bestow on someone’s last words, here trauma is revealed through a monotony of shopping lists, misdirected violence, and chain-smoking.
Framed as a murder mystery, we eagerly await a conclusion to this story which, had we admitted it to ourselves, was solved from the very start.
otsa-lõppes-ramm
April 21, 2025Noh, see ei olnud nüüd päris nii hull, et kindlasti pooleli peaks jätma. Kui mul ei oleks ühtegi raamatut järge ootamas ja midagi tarka ei oleks teha, siis ma võiksin lõpuni lugeda küll. Aga ega ta ikka eriti köitev ole, pean tunnistama. Aeg-ajalt armastan sellist "mida sülg suhu toob" ühes rodus hüplike mõtetega jauru, aga siis peab sel ikkagi mingi tuntav stiil olema.
Aga näen siin, et tegelikult lugejatele meeldib ja see on nii tore. Lugege ikka, eks.
Aga näen siin, et tegelikult lugejatele meeldib ja see on nii tore. Lugege ikka, eks.
June 18, 2024
"Equally well-known is the thoery that below the surface of every story lies another purportedly deeper tale. This text - which is not a short story - does not have to fit this theory, while our life - a story we constantly tell ourselves - does. [...] I doubt I've told the story right. The beauty or practicality of the iceberg theory, as some people call it, is that you can change the surface story - the metaphorical tip of the iceberg - without changing the overall meaning."
Living Things is a wonderful piece of literature about four young men who plan on enjoying a summer working in a vineyard in France. While being cut off from the realities of their proper academic lives back home in Madrid, the group of friends find themselves in increasingly precarious predicaments that threaten their work, friendship and outlook on life. Discovering some harsh realities about life beyond the walls of their institutions, they are immersed in the harsh and alarming actualities of scrounging for work and money while compromising on some of privileged values.
"Facts - I wonder who said this - are always inextricable. Reality is a labyrinth, which is the same as saying it's a desert or a straight line. We can insist that we saw something but never that we understood it."
How can we understand a part of our lives if we were merely looking back on it and coming back and look at this period with the lens of the future? Perhaps this is where a journal can come be helpful as some sort of real-time documentation of the here and now. Even with the journal being the closest thing we have to truth, is there any guarantee that we will understand it through any available lens? In Living Things, Munir uses his journal as a resource to recall this summer of his life. And from these facts, he picks up and puts the pieces of the puzzle together to try to understand what happened. Wandering and mazelike, Living Things is wildly readable and reads at times as an eco-thriller, a novel of the disillusionment of life beyond post-secondary education and an existentially unclassifiable piece of contemporary literature.
"I worry these reflections could serve literature as an entry point to my story. Yet, my elaborating on them here still counts as a form of sincerity, given that all my thinking is being done through that yellow notebook. Keeping a journal is a perilous thing, and we should be warned against it as children. In a way, fixing the past and referring back to that past means becoming enmeshed in the dense thicket of memory. Like the protagonist of my piece of flash fiction."
"I always assumed telling the story of what actually happened would be easier than writing fiction (after all, reality is more painstaking than even the most exhaustive inventions), but I'm beginning to notice that's not the case. Reality is under no obligation to be interesting - neither is memory - while literature is. I can't seem to clear enough room in my memories to make space for mystery and surprise. True, I could shuffle them around, but doing so would be untruthful in its own way."
"Telling the truth, then, doesn't mean exhausting reality (which is infinite) but laying down its reading conditions, those of the outside world, and weaving together all the unsaid things that make a journal tick."
"When a story is well told we don't retain the events so much as the sensations they evoke."
Living Things is a wonderful piece of literature about four young men who plan on enjoying a summer working in a vineyard in France. While being cut off from the realities of their proper academic lives back home in Madrid, the group of friends find themselves in increasingly precarious predicaments that threaten their work, friendship and outlook on life. Discovering some harsh realities about life beyond the walls of their institutions, they are immersed in the harsh and alarming actualities of scrounging for work and money while compromising on some of privileged values.
"Facts - I wonder who said this - are always inextricable. Reality is a labyrinth, which is the same as saying it's a desert or a straight line. We can insist that we saw something but never that we understood it."
How can we understand a part of our lives if we were merely looking back on it and coming back and look at this period with the lens of the future? Perhaps this is where a journal can come be helpful as some sort of real-time documentation of the here and now. Even with the journal being the closest thing we have to truth, is there any guarantee that we will understand it through any available lens? In Living Things, Munir uses his journal as a resource to recall this summer of his life. And from these facts, he picks up and puts the pieces of the puzzle together to try to understand what happened. Wandering and mazelike, Living Things is wildly readable and reads at times as an eco-thriller, a novel of the disillusionment of life beyond post-secondary education and an existentially unclassifiable piece of contemporary literature.
"I worry these reflections could serve literature as an entry point to my story. Yet, my elaborating on them here still counts as a form of sincerity, given that all my thinking is being done through that yellow notebook. Keeping a journal is a perilous thing, and we should be warned against it as children. In a way, fixing the past and referring back to that past means becoming enmeshed in the dense thicket of memory. Like the protagonist of my piece of flash fiction."
"I always assumed telling the story of what actually happened would be easier than writing fiction (after all, reality is more painstaking than even the most exhaustive inventions), but I'm beginning to notice that's not the case. Reality is under no obligation to be interesting - neither is memory - while literature is. I can't seem to clear enough room in my memories to make space for mystery and surprise. True, I could shuffle them around, but doing so would be untruthful in its own way."
"Telling the truth, then, doesn't mean exhausting reality (which is infinite) but laying down its reading conditions, those of the outside world, and weaving together all the unsaid things that make a journal tick."
"When a story is well told we don't retain the events so much as the sensations they evoke."
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