Mateo García Elizondo – författare

A junkie looking for one last fix in a town full of ghosts .This is a ghost story. A junkie has gone to El Zapotal to die – to rent a room in this crumbling backwater, melt into one last fix, and not come back. For someone so ready to no longer be alive, though, he can’t stop clinging to the past. His old dog, Kid, who he abandoned. His love, Valerie, who he introduced to drugs. There’s no such thing as a good memory.El Zapotal doesn’t want him either. The people aren’t welcoming, the streets are empty except for strays, and he’s having trouble pacing his supply. As the drugs run out, the line between what’s real and what’s not blurs to the point of illegibility, and we’re left wandering a tenderly described hinterland of despair, hunger, and regret. García Elizondo has given us an homage to Pedro Páramo , a descent for the ages, a long goodbye with no clear line between the living and dead.

In this stunning literary debut, a young heroin addict embarks on a piercing, hypnotic journey to the end of the night.English translation of title: A Meeting with The LadyA young man leaves the sprawling metropolis behind and finds refuge in a room in a village forgotten by God on the edge of the jungle, Zapotal. Surrounded by copious reserves of opium and heroin, the protagonist carries a notebook in which he has decided to chronicle the last moments of his life. In a haze of opium smoke, he enters the world of dreams, a magical dimension where one is no longer part of the world of the living. He floats between sleep and waking, between life and death, in his little room and around the country, obsessed with visions and memories, including the appearance of Valerie, the only love of his life. At the Rincón de Juan, a tiny hovel with a reputation for sheltering drunkards, troublemakers and prostitutes, and in a country that seems to be inhabited only by lost souls, the gaps in the protagonist''s memory are multiplying, the drugs are running out and death is slow to meet him. Or has it already arrived and she just wasn''t as he imagined?