La escala de los mapas

La escala de los mapas / The Scale of Maps

Novel , 1994

DeBolsillo

Sergio Prim is a staid, middle-aged geographer. The romantic advances of Brezo Varela, a lively young woman who shares his profession, induce a series of terrifying hallucinations from which he attempts to seek refuge by immersing himself in the quest to map a place in which love never results in disillusionment. A lyrical examination of language, imagination, and desire.

"What is astonishing about this novel is the originality of its narrative strategies in harmony with the rhythm of its prose." Carmen Martín Gaite

"A fable of love-laid waste, an almost scientific story of the anguish of existence, a profoundly and deliberately distorted image of perverse reality, its space and time, a tragedy replete with tenderness and humor." ABC Literario

The Scale of Mapsis a rapturous and dazzling achievement, and I, for one, am waiting impatiently for the opportunity to read more of Gopegui."–John Yargo, The Rumpus

"A geographer falls irredeemably in love with a flighty mapmaker in this graceful, peculiar Spanish tale . . . beautifully composed and elegantly translated."Publishers Weekly

"Map scales are about relationships. So is The Scale of Maps, a poignant, provocative, profound and passionate book by respected Spanish writer Belén Gopegui."–The Kansas City Star

"'Gopegui's first novel; The Scale of Maps, is a story about a magic trick that Prim never quite masters, an ambitious disappearing act that ends in irredeemable failure. . . . "–Words without Borders

"It's an ambitious novel, to be sure, made beautiful by Gopegui's liquid prose, and made accessible by her ultimate refusal to answer her own questions." –Janet Potter, Bookslut