Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman

Through these escapades and regular salon debates between the city’s resident intelligentsia, Neuman discusses the intentions, failures, and aesthetics of the written word. Together, Sophie and Hans translate poetry and have immensely explicit sex. Against this backdrop, Neuman simultaneously constructs the bare bones of a murder mystery. He searches flowers and dreams for signs, guiding Hans through his adventures with Sophie. She is betrothed to a local business mogul with political connections.

Hans becomes entangled in a clandestine love affair with a connoisseur of literature and closet feminist named Sophie. Hans makes friends with the busker, called simply “the organ grinder,” and a Spanish businessman named Álvaro, who yearns for his fatherland but can’t seem to leave the strange vortex of Wandernburg’s charm. Its streets, landmarks, and buildings are almost never oriented the same way two mornings in a row, making it difficult to leave. Built on the borderlands, Wandernburg has constantly shifted between Prussia and Saxony. But he finds himself captivated by an old busker and the town’s eerie, transient geography.

The protagonist, Hans, an iterant literary translator, only intends to stay for the night. The story takes place in Wandernburg, a fictitious German city, during the early nineteenth century in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. It contemplates a myriad of subjects: investigating contemporary politics through the lens of history, the nature of belonging, memory, citizenship, aesthetics, language, love, dreams, time, and the performance of propriety, to name a few. isbn 9780374119393Īndrés Neuman’s Traveler of the Century reflects Latin America’s “total novel,” brutally examining all aspects of society through diverse yet overlapping themes.

Traveler of the Century by Andrés Neuman