Míster Ángel del Río : Novela de los nombres

Ángel del Río (1901-1962) was a distinguished Spanish professor at Columbia University and a key figure in the development of Hispanic studies. Del Río received and accompanied Federico García Lorca on the trip during which Lorca would write *Poet in New York*, some of whose poems are dedicated to him. A companion and scholar of the Generation of '27, his destiny intersected with that of painters, writers, exiles, revolutionaries, intelligence agents… among whose names some are touched by glory —like those of Machado, Lorca, Salinas, Hemingway, and Diego Rivera— but there are also false ones, duplicitous ones, obscure ones, invisible ones. This tragic contrast between ordinary lives and beings bathed in the light of immortality permeates the entire novel and also reveals the fabulous nature of literary history and its heroes. With a plot —at times gripping and at others contemplative— in which metaliterature and fiction intertwine with history, and through lyrical prose, Enrique Andrés Ruiz paints a vivid portrait of a segment of the Spanish exile community in the United States following the Civil War. What begins as a feverish search for the professor's trail ultimately transforms into a beautiful novel about the urge to write, about what we know and name, and about what we don't know and invent. Like a potter, the narrator of this work molds the raw, "stiff, mute" material of documents and blends it with imagination "to give voice and body to words, so that names may regain their lost flesh."