Those who listen
CANDAYA, 2023, 544 p. LITERARY FICTION, Spanish
In Those who listen, Diego Sánchez Aguilar explores all the forms of Anxiety and Fear that define our contemporary society.
“A thoughtful novel that avoids sermons: the best way to be a political novel” José María Pozuelo Yvancos .
A novel that reminds us Thomas Pinchon, David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, and the Bulgarian Guéorgui Gospodínov. And something to do as well with Vivir abajo by Gustavo Faverón.
The second novel by Murcian writer Diego Sánchez Aguilar (first one, Factsbook) is an extensive book with a deep political, contemporary and current commitment. A novel about anxiety, family, care, madness, the planet, capitalism and language.
It is also a novel about language, about the way in which language constructs the world and, above all, about what future is possible, thinkable or imaginable within the horizon of meanings of a language dominated by the ideology of marketing and economic profit and infinite growth. Diego Sánchez Aguilar shows, with humour and precision, how this language determines common sense, and defines what is reasonable and what is madness.
The closing ceremony of the Future Summit has an unexpected ending that puts the G7 presidents in an awkward position. While their advisors try to find out who has caused this problem and how to solve it, scenes from the lives of characters united by one fact are interspersed: they all hear a strange noise, the origin of which they cannot determine. This sound has side effects that will make them rethink their lives and their ethical convictions in a world that seems to be crumbling by the minute. When the future seems like a territory populated by ghosts, Diego Sánchez Aguilar explores, in Those who listen, all the forms of anxiety and fear that define contemporary society. And it will be difficult to emerge unscathed from his relentless enquiry.
Original Title
Los que escuchan.
“Se trata de una de las apuestas más llamativas de la “rentrée” literaria de este año. ‘Los que escuchan’, la segunda novela del escritor cartagenero -aunque afincado en Londres- Diego Sánchez Aguilar en el prestigioso sello barcelonés Candaya, promete atrapar, remover e incluso cuestionar al público con un texto al mismo tiempo ambicioso y adictivo, comprometido y rico, inteligente y emocionante. En un futuro inmediato en que las soluciones tecnológicas al cambio climático ya no surten efecto, la incertidumbre y el miedo al colapso empiezan a generar consecuencias sociales, psicológicas y políticas en un Occidente sin rumbo que baila con el caos.” José Daniel Espejo, El Diario Murcia, ElDiario.es, 9 septiembre 2023.
“Los que escuchan“, de Diego Sánchez Aguilar, es una novela sobre distintos tipos de ansiedad. De tipo laboral: la necesidad de ser continuamente mejor; hay una ecoansiedad que sufren el continuo bombardeo de noticias sobre el cambio climático, el agotamiento de recursos naturales; y hay una ansiedad ética: la de no saber cómo actuar ante un mundo que parece encaminarse hacia un colapso económico, social y medioambiental.” por Evaristo Aguado, Todo Literatura, 6 septiembre 2023.
Territory of representation
World Wide
More about the rights available for this book
sophiesavary@sosavbooks.com
