IN UN LUNGO INFERNO IDENTICO A QUELLO DA CUI VENIAMO. MA D’IMPROVVISO CLEMENTE. E SENZA SANGUE. !!!!!!!!!!!

Baricco è Baricco raga cammo fa

4.5

The night outside was illegible, and the time in which it was vanishing was without measure.

The old farmhouse of Mato Rujo stands blankly in the countryside.
Four year old Nina closes her eyes, flattens herself against the blanket and curls up tight, pulling her knees to her chest. She is hiding beneath the floorboards of the farmhouse.

She felt the earth, cool, under her side, protecting her—it would not betray her. And she felt her own curled-up body, folded around itself like a shell—she liked this—she was shell and animal, her own shelter, she was everything, she was everything for herself, nothing could hurt her as long as she remained in this position. She reopened her eyes, and thought, Don’t move, you’re happy.

Nina’s brother is also hiding somewhere nearby, because three men have come to the farmhouse to kill their father, known as the Hyena, an assassin that has murdered dozens of people during the war.

They were like three madmen, abandoned on a dark stage.

The three men kill the Hyena that night and shoot his young son dead after he aims a gun at them.
Tito, one of the assassins finds Nina, but spares her life, never telling the other two that he had seen her hiding, listening, witnessing and memorizing.

Nina heard a silence that frightened her. Then she joined her hands and stuck them between her legs. She curled up even tighter, bringing her knees toward her head. She thought that now it would all be over. Her father would come to get her and they would go and have supper. She thought that they would not speak again of that night, and that soon they would forget about it: she thought this because she was a child and couldn’t know.

Years pass.
It seems no one thinks about the war anymore; no one wants to remember.
But for Nina, and for Tito the war never ended.

But there was a whole world that had never emerged from the war, and was unable to fit in with that happy land.

Years pass. Two of the assassins have died under suspicious circumstances.

That is the only, the true reason you fought, because this was what you had in mind, to be revenged. And now you should be able to utter the word ‘revenge.’ You killed for revenge, you all killed for revenge, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s the only drug for pain there is, the only way not to go mad, the drug that enables us to fight. But it didn’t free you, it burned your entire life, it filled you with ghosts. In order to survive four years of war you burned your entire life…

Two of the three assassins are dead.
Tito is still alive, but for how long?

How dizzying time can be. Where am I? The man wondered. Here or there? Have I ever been in a moment that was not this one?

La prosa de Baricco es una garantía de disfrute, cuidada y aparentemente sencilla introduce al lwctor en su mundo narrativo sin que éste lo note. En esta novelita (¿cuento? ¿nouevelle?) Baricco desarrolla las consecuencias de la guerra, del infierno que nos marca y nos sigue lacerando de por vida.

A terse crime drama that unfolds like a screenplay. A weird little book which isn't easily pigeonholed as any one thing; you can read it like a meditation on the futility of revenge, or as some kind of semi-westernish-noir set in Spain.
I could see this up on the big screen as directed by Wong Kar Wai- that might give you a clearer idea of the tone at any rate.

Però non accadde nulla, perchè alla vita manca sempre qualcosa per essere perfetta.
Brevissimo, ma molto intenso.

La storia di una vita intera, anzi, di più vite intere, raccontata in 80 pagine. Una storia di guerra e di vendette, ma di vendette delicate, sottili... Una storia quasi impalpabile.

2 for 2 with this author. I absolutely love his writing style; he's unafraid to get lost in beauty and has an almost defiantly romantic view on life. I love his books for the style and prose more than the narratives, which is less an indictment of his stories and more just a great appreciation for his words.

En comparación con las otras historias de Baricco, esta me ha parecido más floja.
Una historia sencilla, cargada de odio, dolor e indiferencia; bien narrada, pero que a mí no ha conseguido conmoverme en conjunto; aunque hay descripciones muy poderosas, como su comienzo (entre otros).