The Garden of Seven Twilights

El jardí dels set crepuscles #1-3

by Miquel de Palol i Muntanyola, Adrian Nathan West (Translator)

During an atomic alarm in Barcelona in the year 2025, the thirty-year old hero takes refuge in a luxurious mansion in the mountains where he is put up, along with other guests, awaiting the outcome of the conflict. For the following seven days the residents of the mansion spend their spare time reading and taking walks, and, above all, telling stories to each other. The narrators (most of whom belong to the generation thirty years older than the hero's) are eight in number, and the stories they tell can be taken as autonomous ones, although, as the novel advances, it may soon be that when juxtaposed, they do indeed weave a web of intrigue about a family of bankers--a web that gradually involves some of the guests in the mansion.

Genres: Fiction, Spain, Literary Fiction, Novels, Spanish Literature, Literature, Dystopia

885 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

Miquel de Palol i Muntanyola va néixer a Barcelona el dia 2 d'abril de l'any 1953, en una casa del carrer Aragó, tot i que visqué a Valladolid fins als 17 anys, on el seu pare, Pere de Palol i Salellas, era catedràtic d'arqueologia i prehistòria a la universitat de la mateixa ciutat. Miquel de Palol tornà a la seva ciutat natal per estudiar arquitectura. Als 19 anys inicià la seva carrera literària com a poeta. En aquest camp, destaca El porxo de les mirades, obra amb la qual obtingué el premi Carles Riba 1982 i el premi Crítica de Serra d'Or.[2]

L'any 1989, Miquel de Palol s'estrenà com a narrador i publicà la seva primera novel·la: El jardí dels set crepuscles, obra amb la qual guanyà cinc premis: Crexells 1989, Premi Crítica Serra d'Or 1990, Premio Nacional de Crítica 1990, Premi Nacional de Literatura de la Generalitat de Catalunya 1990, Premio Ojo Crítico II Milenio de Radio de España. Segons l'autor, El porxo de les mirades i Indiferència són els antecedents naturals d'El jardí dels set crepuscles. El jardí dels set crepuscles està traduït a l'italià, l'alemany, l'holandès i el castellà.

L'any 1994, guanyà el premi Ciutat de Barcelona amb la novel·la Ígur Neblí. L'any 1997, gràcies a El Legislador, obtingué el premi Josep Pla. L'any 1998, guanyà el premi Sant Jordi amb El Quincorn: una història romàntica. El 2006, Palol fou guardonat amb el Premi Joanot Martorell per la novel·la Un home vulgar. L'any 2008 guanya el Premi Mallorca de Narrativa per la novel·la El Testament d'Alcestis i és nomenat Premi Nacional de Literatura el 2010 per la mateixa obra.

L'any 1991, Miquel de Palol deixà de fer d'arquitecte per dedicar-se exclusivament a la literatura i la poesia. Ha col·laborat en diversos mitjans de comunicació i revistes científiques i culturals com Tarotdequinze, Serra d'Or, El Pont, Avui, El Triangle, La Vanguardia, El Periódico de Catalunya, El País, ABC, El Mundo, Interviú, El Urogallo, entre d'altres. És membre de l'Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC) i del PEN català.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy Shit! How could anyone not give this 5 stars? What a complex and enigmatic novel. The last 70 pages alone made the first 810 pages worth it. Thank you to the people at Dalkey and Adrian Nathan West for translating this insanely engrossing work of art

[Basho · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a complex book. What I should have done upon reflection is keep a notebook of character names and relations with regard to the layered stories. I got a bit lost. This book deserves 5 stars for ambition alone, but in the end the execution of that ambition left a little to be desired. It has to be hard to carry out a project of this magnitude with a number of layered stories all relating to one another, where symbolism and deception are constantly at play. It’s a big game of power among an elite group of a banking circle. Or is it? Nothing is totally clear in this story of stories and that is probably the idea. I will be curious to see what other people think of this big amazing brick and also excited to read more from this author.

[Shaye Easton · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me exactly two months to read this 885 page chonker and I can confidently say that I know less now than I did before -- in other words, whereas before there were corners of my mind that were silent, primordially blank, these blank spots, these points of absence, are now filled with questions, with mysteries, in a sense, with a new kind of absence, a little more defined, and thus more deeply empty -- which, if I read the novel correctly, is likely exactly what Palol intended.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible achievement. 800+ pages of wildly inventive writing. Fun, brilliant and inspiring. The fact that this is his first novel is mind-blowing. Really, really good.

4.5 ⭐️

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is one of those ones where a bunch of people are stuck in one location for a while and proceed to tell stories to each other to pass the time. in this case the people are a shadowy upper class assortment who have escaped barcelona in the year 2025 shortly before it is destroyed by an atomic blast. they begin to tell stories that at first don't appear to have much relation to each other, but as the book goes on we find that they all relate to clandestine financial and political wrangling, connected to an organisation called the insutite(an sort of privatised cia alternative that liases directly with the IMF) and the mir bank, which has been in possession of a mysterious jewel that can control the world, probably. in the margins at the beginning of each story you will see a number indicating the layer of narration the story is on, and this is important, because the narrators keep passing things onward to other narrators, culminating in one section of the book with 8 layers of stories nested inside each other. the stories and the connections between them, but also contradictions and deliberate omissions by the narrators, continue to accumulate throughout the book, leading to a ever growing mass of often contradictory information. this gets especially convoluted when it's revealed that some of the characters in one story are actually characters we've already met in another story just with their names changed. the difficulty of grasping exactly what is going on and who is lying to who seems to be part of the intended effect of the book, and the characters themselves even comment and speculate on it. some of the stories also work quite well individually, for example the very bizarre one about a society that bury their dead in the middle of roads, and the story about a guy trapped in a time loop where he has to go to the same party forever. this book is apparently relatively basic compared to palol's later works, so i'm excited to read those whenever they get englished in the next 70 years or so.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Pleeze Tranzlate Pleeze!!!!!!

[a little joke ;; this edition is the German translation of [book:El jardí dels set crepuscles|6494447].

trans'd from the Catalan by Adrian Nathan West, an=excerpt ::
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/fict...

"I'm sure that if Gravity's Rainbow or The Recognitions were written in Catalan, nobody would know about their existence." --The Untranslated

"I’ve been trying to publish this for a decade. If anyone can spot us the $50K it would cost . . ." --Chad W. Post of Open Letter Books

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally finished! What a journey it was. I had a really nice time with this book and I am so glad I closed out 2023 with it. I loved the nested story structure, and I found it easy enough to follow for the majority of the book. Towards the middle it became a little bit muddled but that was quickly rectified.

I will have many fond memories of waking up early before the rest of my family and diving into these wonderful characters and the exciting conspiracy they were unravelling. I think I am going to miss it more than I imagine, so I wouldn't be surprised if I picked up another huge book before too long.

Day 5 was pretty slow, I thought, but the other 6 days were pretty much perfect. I did think the ending left a little bit to be desired, left me a touch underwhelmed, but nothing too bad. I think I was hoping for an ending like Cartarescu's Solenoid that completely blew me away, but instead I got an ending that was perfectly fine and in the spirit of the later part of the book.

At 885 large pages, this was definitely one of the larger books I read this year, but it also was perhaps the book that I enjoyed spending that time with the most. The nested story structure was incredibly effective in keeping me engaged and interested. The book became very difficult to put down, and when I wasn't reading I was trying to puzzle out the various meanings of some of the more "out there" stories while trying to guess what would happen, as well as various central mysteries that actually had good resolution.

One major mystery was not given resolution, and while that lack of resolution was true to the spirit of the story, it did frustrate me a little bit. However, these are minor quibbles.

Gardens of the Seven Twilights will enter my top 10 books ever, I believe. Truly a remarkable achievement of imagination and writing. I had a blast, and highly recommend this book.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 2 out of 5]

This started off really promisingly. Stories within stories within stories etc. etc. However at a certain point (maybe 500-600 pages in) I began to lose track of who did what to whom or even who was whom (since characters names seemed to become malleable). By the end I had no idea what was going on or even it the stories were consistent. The novel finishes on a note of philosophical gobbledygook.

Disappointing

[Jean Ra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mi cerebro está parcialmente obstruido y a esta hora no me permite escribir ni unas mínimas líneas con impresiones generales de esta compleja novela... por ahora. Necesitaré de un reseteo nocturno para si quiera esbozar unas cuantas líneas generales.

============

Banda sonora


Con este novelón fue como Miquel de Palol inició su carrera como novelista. Es una apuesta a todas luces ambiciosa, compleja, un tocho que viene a ser la respuesta catalana a los grandes novelones posmodernos que suelen aparecer en Norteamérica, si bien, creo yo, Miquel de Palol no le presta demasiada atención a la literatura americana, sus intereses parecen ubicarse antes en autores europeos. En un panorama literario como el catalán, dominado por un gusto por obras más ligeras, principalmente de corte intimista o si no de estilo más cómico, a poder ser que no pasen de las doscientas páginas, ésta es una rara avis, una apuesta poco convencional por estos pagos, dando cabida a una multitud de personajes, situaciones y estilos, en una novela que aúna a otras tantas novelas.

A nivel personal diré que, de forma curiosa, esta gran obra de las letras catalanas la descubrí en Madrid, en la famosa Cuesta de Moyano, enclave de los libros de segunda mano. En una de esas mesas en la que había apilados muchísimos libros, me llamó la atención uno especialmente grueso de color amarillo (por entonces Anagrama no había hecho la división entre los amarillos para traducciones y grises para la lengua española) de unas 800 páginas, tamaño que no es muy habitual en Anagrama. Le eché una ojeada. En ese momento el nombre de Miquel de Palol no me sonó lo más mínimo, pero estaba claro que el autor, dado su nombre, era de aquí. Muchos elementos me llamaron la atención: futuro post-apocalíptico, manuscrito encontrado, historias dentro de historias... sin embargo, al leer algunas páginas aleatorias, no me pareció el momento, en todo caso apunté mentalmente el título del libro. Al regresar a Catalunya e investigar un poco descubrí que el libro en verdad había sido publicado originalmente en catalán y que el autor sí me sonaba de una aparición en "L'hora del lector" un programa literario de la televisión catalana que dirigió y presentó el mallorquín Emili Manzano.

No relacioné en ese momento del recuerdo con ese otro cuando vi a un autor, con gafas y de formas muy sosegadas, que afirmaba que había estudiado para arquitecto y que en ese momento estaba presentando un libro sobre algo de ejercicios del punto de vista. Pero estaba ahí. A pesar de su ambición literaria, De Palol no está entre las figuras literarias más nombradas, es casi como un maestro secreto de la literatura catalana, de la que se distancia por evidentes diferencias estéticas.

Porque este El jardí del set crepúscules viene a incorporarse a la tradición de la novela enciclopédica que en su día inició Voltaire con su "Cándido" y que con el paso de los años ha venido a convertirse en un modelo de novela totalizadora, en un formato novelesco que no sólo quiere contar una historia, además capturar la esencia filosófica de su tiempo. Así, la novela arranca en una Barcelona que también ha sufrido las consecuencias de una guerra atómica desatada a nivel mundial. El narrador recorre unas calles dónde lo que más intimida son los comandos del ejército, aunque también las bandas de criminales, los cadáveres abandonados, un panorama dantesco. Gracias a su madre, el narrador es transportado en una complicada operación hasta un gran castillo perdido en algún punto de la montaña, ahí comienza verdaderamente la novela.

Porque, al modo de El decamerón de Boccaccio, en ese castillo están acomodadas una serie de personajes y en sucesivas jornadas cuentas diversas historias, que al principio parecen dispersas y un simple ramaje de historias, una amalgama singular, pero que conforme avanzan las jornadas descubrimos una relación secreta. Se erige como relevante la sucesión en la Banca Mir, un importante entidad bancaria con numerosos tentáculos en el mundo empresarial y político. Y en mitad de esas historias con engaños amorosos y violencia, también surge, cada vez con más vigor, una enigmática joya de poderes descomunales, que termina erigiéndose como el corazón del libro. No es tanto un prodigio mineral como un nombre metafórico para un artefacto que se nos comenta que podría ser el originador de la guerra nuclear del inicio.

De Palol teje todos esos numerosos hilos no sólo para envolver al lector en una maraña narrativa o para hacer una exhibición de virtuosismo literario, también le sirve para efectivamente abordar unos hechos desde diferentes puntos de vista y contrastar diferentes estilos y formas de pensamiento. Por ejemplo, en una de las historias se nos narra la historia de un hombre con TOC (Trastorno obsesivo-compulsivo) y a continuación, en el mismo sanatorio dónde va a parar este hombre, otro narrador habla de su extraña historia, cuando quedó atrapado en un bucle temporal, en una cena que se repetía de forma constante para su consternación y extrañeza. Lo racional se mezcla con lo fantástico. Así, también se hallan cosas como el Googol un gran barco equipado con un superordenador y que alberga experimentos genéticos para hallar un súper-hombre, que se entreteje con otra historia relacionada con el tarot, o el gran y misterioso sistema astral plasmado en el enigmático jardín de ese catillo-refugio, el nombrado Jardín de los siete crepúsculos, que es el punto geográfico clave en todo ese laberinto de historias y mundos, un lugar invisible desde el exterior y que alberga diferentes árboles y tiene mobiliarios con formas astrales.

En fin, que la gran extensión del libro también sirve no sólo para componer vistosos hilos, también para jugar con ellos a nivel estructural y es que Palol, arquitecto de formación, halla en la composición de la estructura narrativa uno de sus puntos fuertes, una significativa arma con la que más puede asombrar al lector. En el saldo del debe, no me ha convencido tanto su capacidad para componer personajes o el estilo de su prosa. Y es que en cierto momento de la recta final, los personajes comentan que la gran literatura es ésa que no es esfuerza tanto en mantener la sugestión, que simplemente se expresa a su manera, lo que sin duda es una explicación de la propia concepción narrativa del autor, que somete al lector a muy largos parlamentos entre los personajes, que razonan y se cuestionan las historias que van escuchando, y que hace que estas escenas avancen de forma muy morosa, aunque hay que permanecer atento para cuando aparecen datos clave o bien saltos cualitativos en las micro-historias o bien en la macro-historia que las abarca a todas. De Palol no cree en la belleza del párrafo, su prosa es más bien una edificación parsimoniosa de los elementos narrativos, sin duda le gusta más pensar su historia en grandes términos, en conectar grandes bloques narrativos, o de forma repentina hacernos ver que una historia en verdad se refiere a otros personajes pero con los nombres cambiados, de Palol piensa su travesía narrativa en grandes etapas, no tanto en el kilómetro a kilometro.

A mí esa forma de proceder reconozco que me ha pesado un poco en ciertos tramos. Para acabar de abobarlo, resulta que la edición que podido tomar de la biblioteca de Montcada i Reixac se corresponde con una época en la que escaseaba el papel y las editoriales debieron ingeniárselas para encajar sus textos empleando menos papel de Capellades o de dónde correspondiera. De esta forma, la edición que leí ocupa 564 páginas mientras que en otras traducciones, por ejemplo la francesa o italiana, rebasan las mil páginas. Esto genera la sensación artificial que lees mucho y avanzas poco, páginas grandes y letras pequeñas, a veces parece que leer una sola página es como leer un mural entero lleno de letras, que tras una sesión considerable (aunque mi ritmo lector es lento) resulta que sólo has avanzado veinte y pocas páginas, lo que incrementa esa sensación de pesadez, aunque en verdad no es culpa de Palol o del texto, sólo de la edición.

Ahora esta novela también ha desembarcado en el mercado norteamericano, lo que me parece una decisión razonable, en un panorama dónde los grandes escritores deben entregar por lo menos un libro de ochocientas o mil páginas, esta novela parece tener buen acomodo. Porque además tiene rigor dramático, ofrece imágenes insólitas como ahora películas de porno muy duro dónde aparece una de las mujeres que rondan el palacio, el libro acerca del Googol se adentra en un verdadero laberinto literario, hay muchas historias que abarcan tanto a la alta burguesía (convertida en una suerte de aristocracia) como el lumpen, a criminales que se demuestran también vitales dentro del resorte narrativo.

En fin, ignoro si es una novela recomendable a nivel general, sólo sé que es uno de los libros más potentes y osados dentro de la literatura catalana. Por su riqueza y capacidad de sorpresa paga la pena el esfuerzo, en adentrarse en ese libro de libro y poder conocer desde lúbricos juegos eróticos hasta fragmento de novela de espías en la que se convierte toda esa historia de la Banca Mir, desde clubes dónde juegan a ruleta rusa hasta asaltos con piratas. La oferta es amplia y hace válida e incluso recomendable realizar varias lecturas para absorber su gran, gran cantidad de detalles. Yo por ahora siento la cabeza saturada de ese mundo, la verdad es que se habría agradecido un poco más de agilidad narrativa por parte de Palol. Pero está claro que habrá que regresar a su literatura, ya sea en este libro o en otro de su extensa producción literaria.

[Andrew]

I read the Adrian Nathan West translation of the scene with the swing and it was so engrossing that I still think about it and I am left with either practicing my Spanish again to read the Spanish version or waiting until some publisher has the bravery to sell it in English, and my patience is running THIN.

EDIT (03/24/2023): IT IS HERE. IN ENGLISH.

[Josep Mitjavila · Rating 5 out of 5]

El meu primer Palol (1ra edició en 3 volums). Espectacular. A partir d’aquí gairebé tots els Palols llegits fins a Bootes.

[Seth Austin]

Miquel de Palol’s English-language debut by way of Nate West & Damien Wraith is - and this shouldn’t come as a surprise - a strange beast. Responses to ‘El Jardi’ include “an enormous storytelling machine”, “a gargantuan pulp sphynx”, and an “encyclopaedic archeology of Cold War thought”. None of these descriptions are off-base (I wish I could take credit for the second myself), but none of them hone in precisely on the strange contradiction that lies at the centre of Palol’s Garden: how a novel so completely earnest in its conceit can still be read as a sprawling pitch-black satire.

If you’ve rubbed shoulders with the book, you likely know the premise by now. ‘El Jardi’ is an account of a Catalonian Apocalypse told through a meta-commentary of Borgesian faux-scholarship. Its author, a refracted permutation of the novel’s penman in reality, is hilariously named Miquel de Palol I Moholy-McCullydilly. A scholar of dubious authority, McCullydilly invites us into an account of the survivors of the “Four Wars of Entertainment”, sheltered from the nuclear blasts in a palatial mansion in the mountains (exact location, redacted). These privileged survivors - all Elect, no Preterite - spend their time in this mansion swapping stories.

That’s your setup. What the hundred-odd nested stories amount to is an alternate Catalonian history leading into a cybernetic, dystopian future. ‘El Jardi’ is the sort of plot-forward exercise in maximalism that all but demands a cork-board with thumbtacks and red string. The challenge of keeping all the narrative plates spinning is further complicated when a mass identity shift occurs mid-way through (though readers of Tokarczuk’s ‘The Books of Jacob’ will at least go into this knowing they’ve had practice).

While completely sincere in his belief in the power of storytelling (tale as old as time) Palol is simultaneously indicting those who pull the levers of power from ivory towers while the rest of the world melts under the heat of the atom bomb. Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s Palol on the subject from my most recent email with him:

“Part of my purpose is to castigate the barbarism of the inequalities of the human species. In "El Jardí," there is a satirical undertone that I have emphasized in later books. Pere Ficinus is a decisive character in this sense. He is a poor thief who is rescued from indigence by a patrician (whose name is Patrici, ironically). Although he seemingly gains access to a realm of justice and well-being, with Dickens as a reference, he ends up becoming a thief of the highest instances.”

I find it difficult to reconcile this geopolitical social critique with the setting from which the critique is voiced (and I’m going to start repeating myself here): a baroque mansion, filled with societal elites, eating and boozing their way through an unfolding nuclear war. But I can’t discount the possibility that this stark contrast is part of the critique itself, making the contradiction a thematic necessity. After all, Kurt Gödel is spectre that looms of the 0-level narrator’s entrance to the Garden of Twilight.

Admirers of Pynchon’s ensemble casts, Moore’s focalisation of narrators, Bolano’s interlocking story arcs, and Cohen’s disdain for the technocapitalist cartel that quietly took over our world will find themselves at home within these 888 pages. Thank you @dalkeyarchive for sending me every one of them.

[elescritorensulaberinto · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro trata sobre una joya... ¡y es una joya!
Incluye una serie de historias encajadas unas dentro de otras (La historia de Lluïsa Cross, la historia del embajador Goldoni, la historia de las navegaciones del Googol, el sueño de Eliseu Praetorius, el columpio y las estrellas, la habitación circular, la cena en la casa de Virginia Guasch, el señor Galbasch...) de modo que cada una leída por sí sola tiene un sentido, pero al ser leídas todas juntas adquieren OTRO sentido (u otros sentidos).
Impresiona la paciencia que ha derrochado el autor para ensamblar tantas piezas, pero aún impresiona más la grandiosa calidad del producto final.
¡Excelente trabajo, Miquel, enhorabuena!

[Tony Gualtieri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thriller disguised as a philosophical novel. It revolves around a McGuffin called the "jewel" and a cast of unrealistic characters who seem to control the financial operation of the world. There are some marvelous passages that often give way to a cod mysticism reminiscent of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which was published about the same time.

I admire the author's ability to maintain an astonishing narrative complexity. I hope to read one of his later (as yet untranslated) works where I presume his speculations are tempered with a bit more maturity.

[Omar Abu samra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dropped at 200. Well if you can endure another one thousand and one night again then go ahead. Honestly I cannot do this harm to myself. Thanks Dalkey archive

[Jack Alexander Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

An (overly?) ambitious mosaic of mythology, mysticism, enlightenment philosophy, politics, romance, spy thriller, sci-fi, noir and Borgesian weirdness that, through the inclusion of everything, is utterly sui generis.

Ultimately, it's an impressive and intimidating cat's cradle of allusive, elusive and illusory storytelling that, if you warm to it, will swallow you whole.

(One thing that detracted slightly were the errata littered throughout the text. It's a gargantuan thing so I can see how a few could be missed, but it's a shame that such a beautiful edition has been let down slightly, though not enough to put me off re-reading this in years to come).

[Julien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ouf !

Ce marathon, cette démesure, ce monstre labyrinthique... J'en ferai une critique complète un jour, après une deuxième lecture. Pour l'instant, j'en suis encore à me demander comment est-ce qu'on arrive à écrire un truc de ce genre sans perdre la boule...

[Andrea Amosson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Este libro es un ejercicio mental. desde ese punto de vista, puede tener más estrellas, pero desde el punto de vista del goce en la lectura, le dejo tres porque se torna cansador en algunos puntos, demasiado denso. Pero más allá de eso, es una obra que vale la pena ser leída.

[Xavier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una de les novel·les catalanes més potents i originals de tots els temps. Excel·lent.

[flowerville · Rating 2 out of 5]

less erudition than eco, less innocence or ability to convolutedness than calvino, less depth than cortazar.

[Peyton · Rating 4 out of 5]

9/10!

"I am me; I am. But am is the subject and I is the verb."

[Joshua Line]

Great, perplexing, but satisfyingly so.

For the next while I'll no longer use Goodreads to record books I read as I loathe the 'drive' it creates to competitively read books and challenge oneself. I realise I like documenting which books I read but I'll record them in a notebook instead. Sadly this crappy platform can't be avoided for book info, reviews and recommendations but otherwise I want out.

[Ferris Mx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this was incredible and impressive. Would definitely benefit from a second reading. Needs a bit more editing; there were plentiful typos and a few places I would definitely tighten things up to avoid the Atlas Shrugged effect.

How can we know the truth when all narrators combine personal experience, secondhand reportage, conjecture, and personal bias? How do we make sense of anything?

[Brian J. DiFranco · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

A contemporary classic of Catalan literature, The Garden of Seven Twilights is a very complexly structured and allusive novel. It is the October book for the World Literature Group I am in on Goodreads — which doesn't exactly choose short or easy books.

There is an outer frame story in the form of a preface in which scholars from the far future discuss the work as a book surviving in several variant manuscripts from their remote past, and try to explain when it was written and when it was set; there is a large literature devoted to it, which is listed in a selected bibliography (the dates of the latest books put the outer frame story sometime in the thirtieth century) and the most probable view is that it was set during the First War of Entertainment (2025), and either dates from that time if it is a nonfiction account, or from some time later if it is fiction (or much later, based on a reference in one story to the destruction of Paris, although the editors discount that). The editors lean to the view that it is nonfiction, perhaps ultimately from wishful thinking (it would be a rare historical document) while to the reader, given the literary nature of it, it is obviously a work of fiction. This aspect reminded me of Boubacar Boris Diop's Le temps de Tamango, which had a similar premise — a book recovered in the far future — which also was considered nonfiction by the far future editors but seems to the reader to be a historical novel. Both Palol's and Diop's novels were published the same year so there is unlikely to be any influence either way (and the plots of the two books have nothing in common).

After the preface, we find ourselves in an inner frame story, which returns from time to time. It is modeled on The Decameron and its Renaissance imitators, with a group of wealthy and powerful individuals taking refuge from the war in a remote mountaintop mansion and amusing themselves by telling stories, arranged by "days". The frame story has a somewhat paranoid first person narrator, who is an outsider relative to the others and is constantly worrying about the possible hidden motives for their actions and for the stories they tell. Unlike The Decameron, however, the stories are nested as in the Thousand and One Nights or Jan Patocki's Manuscript Found in Saragossa, only more so — at one point they get nine layers deep, and even with the help of indications in the margins I couldn't remember who was telling what in the intermediate layers. It also occurs that the names in some of the stories are changed, and the people referred to are the same people as in other stories by other names, but with details changed. Unlike the Thousand and One Nights, the stories all intertwine. Because of that, and the many names that are important, this is a novel which makes heavy demands on the memory, difficult especially at my age. Even the narrator himself complains that he sometimes gets lost, and can't remember the details of the earlier stories later on, although it is difficult to make that fit with the premise that he is the narrator of the book.

The first story is obviously based on King Lear, with the character Mir for Lear (although, ironically, the word "mir" is also Russian for "peace"). One of the later stories is based on Hamlet, and the Hamlet character Harrison actually quotes one of Hamlet's best-known lines. The overall plot has similarities with The Lord of the Rings (the jewel as the ring of power) and the name of the Colum family, who try to steal back the jewel, is perhaps meant to resemble Gollum. One of the guests is named Randolph Carter, who is described as "a dreamer, from a long line of dreamers" and whose stories turn on dreams which are real in some strange way. I'm sure there are many other literary allusions which were less obvious, or at least I didn't get them, possibly from spy or detective fiction which I seldom read. (The "allusion" which seemed one of the most obvious — between the character of Alexis Cros and Patterson's Alex Cross — is purely coincidence, since when I looked it up the first book in that series wasn't written until 1997.)

The stories of the first two and a half days are all centered around the intrigues to control the Mir Bank, and about its later owners Alexis Cros and his daughter Lluisa. The second group of stories (the remainder of Day 2 and Day 3) is about a spy ship called the Googol. At the eighth level, it hooks up to the story of the Mir Bank again. The third group (Days 4-6) returns directly to the the story of the jewel.

As the guests come to realize that the stories contradict each other and some are obviously false, there is much postmodernist-sounding discussion of epistemology and the nature of stories and "reality". The discussions of the guests about philosophy, history and politics are very abstract and not particularly enlightening; they seem to be mainly playing with words and oppositions. Particularly at the end, the novel seems to dissolve into this sort of verbal labyrinth.

One thing which is really distracting is the large number of apparent typos on almost every page; not misspelled words, but omitted or duplicated words, unidiomatic or even ungrammatical sentences and so forth. Knowing that the translator, Adrian Nathan West, has won all sorts of awards as a translator, and never having seen any problems of that kind with other books from Dalkey Archive Press, I wondered whether the typos might have been a deliberate feature of the original novel, to give the impression of a manuscript tradition, as these sorts of errors are ubiquitous in ancient books that have been copied and recopied hundreds of times before they were ultimately printed. However, in that case I would have expected footnotes by the "editors" noting the corruptions and proposing emendations, and there was nothing like that in the book, so I suppose it just comes down to poor proofreading.

In the end, the reader is left wondering what kind of book he has just read. Is it a detective thriller, a science fiction or fantasy novel, a philosophical novel, a political novel or a collection of stories like The Decameron? The ultimate conspiracy theory, or a parody of conspiracy theories, or some sort of allegory? The ambiguity itself is the point, which marks it as a work of postmodernist fiction. It is a real tour-de-force, quite interesting, and I would have given it four stars — if it had been proofread.

[Giulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really difficult to define this book. It could be described as science fiction, magical realism maybe? There really is a genuine pleasure in narrating stories and creating a rich tale, though.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and I particularly liked the stories within the story(ies), but to be honest I didn't care at all about what the group discussed, their philosophical remarks, etc; even the narrator's thoughts were boring for me. Probably the reason being that the people who are gathering in this house are not well characterised, they pretty much seem interchangeable and this is a major flaw for me. The focus is indeed in the stories and the philosophy rather than the characters and I definitely prefer a character-driven read.
On a positive note, I think that finishing this book confused and with many unanswered questions is the perfect conclusion to this novel, as it carries on the confusion, misunderstandings and lies that have built the story from the beginning and leaves the reader in a state of uncertainty just like the narrator.

[A L]

I feel like I went to the bottom of the ocean and back.

[Cameron Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a tedious bore.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a programmer by trade, I find it necessary to avoid recursion. But when I encounter it in literature I find it irresistible. I'd even consider this work a masterpiece of its kind, even along side the likes of Pelevin's Buddha's Little Finger. The whole thing has a a fairly absurd setup, with an introduction which is even more so:

Betanci placed a book he'd brought to read during his stay onto the table. Gamut picked it up and read the title aloud.

"The Garden of the Seven Twilights. What's it about?"

"I just started it," Betanci said. "It's got a rather dubious introduction, but then it deals with the destruction of Constantinople during a nuclear war."

Only Constantinople is missing here, swapped with Barcelona. The setup is: in the near future a group of elite Europeans retire to a remote mansion to escape global nuclear war and tell stories to pass the time—similar to the setup in Boccaccio's The Decameron and its retreat from the Black Death—but I don't think that analogy takes us very far here.

As far as the story goes, how to characterize it? Palol digs through a massive swamp where he sinks everything—spies, jewel heists, murder, conspiracy, pirates, cyborg pleasure yachts, bestiality—constant digression with many moving parts, all the way to the proverbial kitchen sink.

There's even an infernal Groundhog Day bit where the day repeats over and over, perhaps falling into the trap I try to avoid in my own work, mentioned above:

"Me? Overblown? I'd like to know why you're all pretending you don't know what I'm talking about. This joke has gone on for too long."

Maybe you could say it's literarily over the top, the recursive stories swap out character names as often as sex partners; any mnemonic trick I could think of kept falling short:

I racked my brain, trying to find a clue that would make something reasonable out of this bag of knots.

Some times it seems Palol realizes what the the reader might think about processing so many knots:

"The great challenge of discursive literature isn't the concealment of information or the profligacy thereof, if that's what's called for; it's rather the act of dissimulation from the very start. It's not easy to sell ruses and pass them off as doubts, but still make the result satisfy expectations."

But ultimately he leaves no reason to despair:

"Despite everything," she said, "there shall never be any lack of grounds for interpretation."

One thing you could say about this novel is it takes many philosophical turns:

literature seems ambiguous, whereas the philosophy that pervades it seems concrete, and this is how my own feelings were, obscure, but no less tangible, while my intentions were concrete, debatable perhaps, but something to act on.

But you could also say it also constantly tries to free itself from any such turn:

Physicists say that any measurement instrument, when applied to the object it is meant to measure, modifies it and thereby falsifies the result. The classic examples are a thermometer in water and a manometer in a cylinder. I thought how a systematic observation of the phenomena of the spirit, of one's own in particular, had the same dreadful capacity to deceive us. The introspector's consciousness makes a crack in his innocence, and veracity is lost as metalanguage proliferates. Consciousness in general ceases to be an instrument of knowledge, becoming an extravagant, useless, stupid pastime, and I resolved to free myself of it.

Ultimately you may question what all of this could amount to in the absurdity of this form:

"You mean to say that the narrator is prisoner of his style, and that the story always goes on."

But in the end—well, I don't want to give anything away so I'll just leave it at this:

We knew what lay at the end of the road, and that knowledge must have been useful in some sense, yet we also realized that to feel it, to make it ours, even to let it go if we eventually had to, we had to travel it; all knowledge aims to go beyond our own experience, which is to say beyond our sentimental reality, is condemned to the inoperability of a tool that one has never learned how to use.

[Amy ☁️ (tinycl0ud) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint-hearted. If you plan to read it casually, expect to block out 2-4 weeks of your life. The physical copy is almost 900 pages long, which in itself is not the challenging thing. The story has so many layers that keeping track of them all requires herculean effort. The outermost layer is set a thousand years in the future and takes the form of academic commentary. It claims that the main narrative is a text from the past and goes about discussing how it can or cannot be 'real', which is a cheeky way of being meta. The main narrative is split into 7 days (reference to Genesis?) and is told from the POV of an unnamed narrator in the year of 2025 during the first of the "Four Wars of Entertainment" a.k.a. nuclear wipeouts.

The story goes: this guy has a well-connected mother and once things got bad in Barcelona, she pulled strings to have him sent to a mansion far away from danger. The mansion acts as a safehouse for rich people in power; they go in and out or stay as long as they need. There's nothing to do but eat, drink, philosophise, have sex, and tell stories. Non-stop stories, stories within stories, one 7 layers deep and another 9 layers deep, with interruptions from various characters from any other layer before. It's not impossible to follow but it is definitely maddening.

As it turns out, the stories all seem to be related to a set of events that happened in the past regarding a bank, a jewel, and the family most closely associated to both and a mysterious person called Ω. The people in the room feature in these stories but under two or three different names, making it clear that the storyteller is speaking in code only understood by those already in the know. Our poor narrator—and by extension, the reader—is definitely not in the know. No single metaphor can suffice in capturing the structure: a labyrinth, a web, a matryoshka doll, oneiric/ lucid dreaming, and perhaps the most apt, a garden that drugs its visitors.

In one of the stories, a guy relives the same day 7 times and goes mad from being the only one aware of it. In another story, somebody jumps from dream to dream in pursuit of a fabled object. The stories are of thugs, murderers, piracy, partner-swopping, chaebol drama, espionage, etc—there is huge variety of story types and all somewhat recognisable in terms of plot. The setting itself also seems to speak of secret pasts and, ironically, their enduring nature. There is an extremely pornographic VHS tape of one of the guests. Within the mansion itself there is rare art, vintage items, and secret family heirlooms.

TBH this is the kind of book that I'm not sure most people would read unless it was assigned for a university course or if they were writing their thesis on books like this (and comparing it to, say, 'Possession' by A. S. Byatt, 'House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski, and 'The Name of the Rose' by Umberto Eco).