Surrender

WINNER OF THE ALFAGUARA PRIZE (SPAIN), 2017 WINNER OF THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATION "Ray Loriga is a fascinating cross between Marguerite Duras and Jim Thompson." --Pedro Almodovar "[A] riveting, and original, achievement." --WIRED, "13 Must-Read Books for Spring" "Loriga envisions in this gripping tale an unsettling dystopia in which all secrets are forbidden... [His] chilling portent of the future will undoubtedly resonate with readers concerned about the erosion of privacy. This memorable page-turner will appeal to fans of Brave New World." --Publishers Weekly "[Surrender is] a Kafkaesque and Orwellian story about authority and collective manipulation, a parable on our societies exposed to the gaze and judgment of all. Through the use of a modest and thoughtful voice, with unexpected bursts of humor, the author constructs a luminous fable about exile, loss, paternity and attachment." --Alfaguara Prize Winner Citation "Part allegory, part dystopian nightmare, Ray Loriga's Surrender narrates one man's futile search for a separate peace under a totalitarian regime . . . A descendant of Orwell's Winston Smith and Kafka's nameless protagonists, he endures his country's authoritarian whimsies with stoicism and surface submission. His voice is deadpan, non-confrontational, yet every so often he sneaks in a telling comment, slyly critical of the authorities. The challenge for the translator, Carolina De Robertis, which she handles with terrific aplomb, is to capture the subtle shifts in tone that signal his inner rebellion." --Northern California Book Award Winner Citation "[Surrender's] climax packs abundant weight...this novel has plenty of power." --Kirkus Reviews "[A] contemplative dystopian story...With an allegorical tone, Spanish writer Loriga presents a spare novel that yields harsh realizations and a deeply felt perception of humanity." --Booklist "Loriga can be considered the originator of writing that moves away from Spanish realism, to mental monologue in a desolate landscape, as if taken from a Hopper painting, with protagonists whose only social nucleus, generally broken, is that of refined writing, of short paragraphs, that does not describe but rather goes, silently, like the tires of a car on a highway." --La Vanguardia --