The Absolute
Published on 17. May 2022
448 pages
978-1-64421-161-8 (ISBN)
Description
A provocative multigenerational exploration of creative genius, madness, and family relationships. With the ambition and density of style of Vladimir Nabokov or Olga Tokarczuk, this is a story both profound and handled with a light touch.
The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters' lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator's ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang.
The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words.
"This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. … It's the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is." -La Nación
The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters' lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator's ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang.
The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words.
"This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. … It's the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is." -La Nación
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Daniel Guebel has published over twenty-five books, including novels, short stories and plays. He won Argentina's National Literature Prize as well as the Argentine Academy of Letters' novel prize. The Absolute was chosen by La Nación newspaper as its book of the year and The Emperor's Pearl won the Emecé Prize. His autobiographical book The Jewish Son also won the Buenos Aires Book Fair's award for literary criticism. Guebel's latest novel is A Japanese Crime. A lover of Japanese literature, he owns a sushi restaurant.
Jessica Sequeira is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel A Furious Oyster, the story collection Rhombus and Oval, the essay collection Other Paradises: Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age and the hybrid work A Luminous History of the Palm. She has translated over twenty books by Latin American authors, and in 2019 was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Sara Gallardo's Land of Smoke.
Jessica Sequeira is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel A Furious Oyster, the story collection Rhombus and Oval, the essay collection Other Paradises: Poetic Approaches to Thinking in a Technological Age and the hybrid work A Luminous History of the Palm. She has translated over twenty books by Latin American authors, and in 2019 was awarded the Premio Valle-Inclán for her translation of Sara Gallardo's Land of Smoke.
