José María Ridao

5th Josep Palau i Fabre International Essay Prize

“At a time rife with thinkers doling out feed to the reading herd, and where the prevailing Panglosses dazzle the public with phrases like 'the weak vital density of the Visigoths' explaining our current DNA, a book like José María Ridao's is a welcome gift and a timely subject for reflection. His considerations regarding man and the Absolute, and the invention of the Absolute by man, encompass the various aspects of this abstraction—from the concept and proclamation of the universally valid to the exercise of the condign superiority it affords, all the way to basing the origin of Creation on a narrative that replaces rational language with a storytelling framework that must be believed implicitly, on pain of becoming an outcast in the eyes of whoever self-appoints as its spokesperson. His review of figures as disparate as Socrates, Saint Augustine, Dante, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Proust is as innovative as it is stimulating. The lure of absolute truth, Ridao says, makes us forget that the truth uttered by human beings is always relative, and often subject to expiration.” — Juan Goytisolo

Review, Babelia, El País, 18/03/2015