Cuentos autobiográficos, 1

At eighty-six, Álvaro Pombo tackles autofiction through eighteen evocations in which he relives the people, places, and experiences that shaped his character and inspired his literature. The Cervantes Prize winner submits to a retrospective examination, free of constraints or ambiguity, that culminates in a wellspring of Pombo-esque patterns and archetypes: the idiosyncrasies of his parents, known as "the gentlemen." The boundary between the intimacy of the home and the shadow of exemplary conduct. The secondary characters who not only influenced his nature but also endowed his characters with traits and soul. Landscapes as states of mind, with Santander as the center of his world. The Piarist Fathers, the Jesuits, and the pre-university institute. Philosophy and his literary awakening. His London adventures. The mysteries of the maternal figure, of love, and of the final light. Pombo once again weaves his work through life, stitching together reality with the imaginable, because only in this way can he truly grasp his own existence. This is why it is a free-flowing autobiography, dispensing with any chronology, because for the author, childhood and youth memories are distinguished only by whether he wore shorts or trousers. Thus, without forcing heroic deeds or epiphanies, Pombo delivers memoirs brimming with "significantly insignificant details" that reveal the complex identity of someone who has always shunned labels. With his lauded, pointillist, and psychological prose, crafted from select, lyrical, and resounding words, he shapes a book that completes and encloses the squaring of the circle for this man from Santander.