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Fiction

Tres segundos de memoria

By Diego Ameixeiras

About this book

A thirty-year old young man on the dole is expecting his next precarious job. In the meantime he wanders through life telling us his day-to-day experiences without any future projects and without anything to do with his past. The main character is a sociable and witty person, a victim of what he calls post-failure, an attitude filled with high doses of cynicism about life. The whole narration consists of the interactions of this character with his friends without much in mind but enjoying sex. It is written with a fresh and direct style, full of humour. Tres segundos de memoria is the novel for which Diego Ameixeiras was given the 2006 Premio Xerais. It is a portrait of a particular urban sector damaged by Galician society, where spontaneity overcomes the politically correct. This novel is inhabited by young characters, educated but failed, with a degree but without any prospects in life and intentionally oblivious of culture in a society that leads them to be unemployed and that perpetuates their adolescence. This is an expressive novel, written with a fresh and direct style, full of humour.

Book fragment

Against all odds and without having to beg much I ended up with some unknown woman in my first sexual experience after two months, one week and three days of intolerable apathy. While I write this I see through the window how the sun can be seen again amidst a race of black clouds that were cruelly pouring down rain and hail. I am not in a condition to claim that this change in the weather –maybe a good metaphor- is going to influence my Sunday moods, which are already quite peaceful and quiet in this moment of reflection and self-criticism in which I indulge before starting reading one of my favourite special features in the newspaper. I feel amazingly happy and I don’t care if the sun shines or the clouds are about to pour because victory is on the inside.