#agustín fernández mallo

Agustín Fernández Mallo, The Nocilla Trilogy 1: Dream (2006)
(trans. from Spanish by Thomas Bunstead in 2015)

Deserts, like the sick, are objects: though living, they are on the edge of everything, are undergoing a process of consumption, and are fundamentally gaunt. Each has white-yellow skin, and subsists in a state of exhaustion, though each also always finds a genetic oasis to save it in the end. The lack of resources leads them to both fantasize situations of out-and-out abundance and pleasure, even in the most grueling moments reach levels of delirium that border on the lysergic, and gather into their domains all manner of strange creatures, hoping for the feeling that someone loves them, someone cares about them. Also, their gauntness makes them the most aesthetic objects on earth, and this is why Tom, who was born in Little America and who knows he’ll never himself live in the Nevada in which his parents grew up, decided to become a doctor.