Arca

In his adolescence, the protagonist of Arca developed an extraordinary gift that allows him to see what has happened in the past simply by touching an object. This ability has made him invaluable to the law, which has called upon his services to solve the most complex crimes, as well as to private companies that seek his help in obtaining information that no one else can provide. Thanks to his talent, the investment fund Hägen-Schulz hires him to investigate the disappearance of one of its employees at Ca’ Barbarigo, a Venetian palace built in 1550, within whose walls all manner of events have taken place: love affairs, betrayals, murders, revenge, and abandonment. While the narrator attempts to decipher the connection between the secrets held by the palazzo and the strange disappearance, Venice faces an unprecedented cataclysm that seems to herald the end of times. Ricardo Menéndez Salmón redefines the ghost story with elements of noir and fantasy, transforming it into a meditation on the fate of Europe. Arca is the most ambitious work in the career of an author who, in the tradition of writers like Kafka, Beckett and Orwell, vindicates the joy and inexhaustible plasticity of language to investigate who we are and what we can become; it is a requiem, but it also announces a new beginning, and highlights the power of fiction as a place from which to think about an era.