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Fiction

O señor Lugrís e a negra sombra

By Luís Rei Núñez

About this book

Novel or reality? The question that many readers of this book will ask is the same question that the great painter and writer Urbano Lugrís (A Coruña, 1908-Vigo, l973) might have asked himself while the river of life dragged him through all sorts of ups and downs. A different kind of water, that of thirty testimonies, was the basis used by Luis Rei Nunez to approach this excessive character, who, besides, is capable of painting that whole period of penitence as a fresco and a truthful group portrait – there are the dark grammar teachers, loose masters, dipsomaniac artists, women who smoke, brothels, a “white” Russian or the would-be writers… In a nutshell, all the strange birds who decided to migrate to bohemian exile as the only escape from the never-ending winter of an oppresive regime. They have the innate talent of Pucho Boedo, a master musician, or of Luís Suárez, the great world footballer. In times when there is a lack of will for serious change, Rei Núñez surprises us with a novel that is both strictly contemporary and Cervantes-like. It is a novel, indeed, but it is also reality. Like life.

Book fragment

The manuscript is found

That day I went back to my city to read some poems at the high school were I studied. A teacher who had taught us Language and Literature during the first three years presided over the event. She was a petit woman and I remembered her mythical miniskirts and also her contagious faith in the value of words, that is the fact. When it is my turn to speak I say this and I go back to my papers, with a dozen poems in rhyme, as it is the characteristic of somebody who abhors the writings of fast truths of modern times. My admiration for Rosalía de Castro and Antonio Machado helped me understand, already many years back, how convenient it is to follow the limits of metrics. Mr Lugrís and the black woman and all these other resources. That is far from being the problem, it is the humility of craftsmen that is the solution. So I nurture, let’s say, figurative poetry. Anyway. My coming back to my old school and old times continued at a bar where we had empanada and octopus with Amandi wine and where this peculiar episode closes with a very peculiar gift.