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Fiction

Seis cordas e un corazón

By Roque Morteiro

About this book

Seis cordas e un corazón was possibly the first Galician book written in slang. The plot brings us back to the key topics in urban culture in the eighties: sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is visual and fluid writing, closer to comic books and cinema, and its urban characters and crazy adventures made the book an instant success. Seis cordas e un corazón laughs at everything and everyone, starting with the book and the author. It was like a firecracker at the doors of Galician literature and new and fresh air came inside. The book was also published at a suitable time, when Galician literature was in an endless debate about tradition and modernity and urban and rural culture. Seis cordas e un corazón laid the cards on the table in one go, without asking for permission or apologising. The book opened the doors to new themes and for new audiences that were not at all present in Galician literature at that time.

Book fragment

–You crazy?

–Fuck it, Lucas, Michi is your friend.

–That’s a fucking hell of friend, Michi is a junkie. He is capable of selling the guitar, even his mother, for a jones.

–He said he needed it for this afternoon. He’ll bring it back later.

–That’s fucking bullshit. You know what that guitar means to me.

–Hey, hey, don’t loose your rag with me fucker! Go and get it if you want, he was playing in the Elastic, I’m sure the concert is not yet over.

–Of course I’m going. At fucking top speed.

Pili had gone too far letting him take the guitar. A friend! Bullocks! Michi was not my friend, he’d called round a couple of times and I’d let him play there, but taking it out… no way! And nowadays whenever he came his arms were black and blue. I had my reasons to keep an eye on my super guitar so I took a taxi to be there before. The guitar was a real 62’ Telecaster, wooden box, they had not made one for ten years. I got it in London a couple of years ago, when I was working in that bloody hamburger shop. The stink of that burnt shit was under your skin and you could not remove it even with disinfectant, I used to have this nightmare of loads and loads of minced meat falling on top of me and smothering me to death.