La multitud errante / A Tale of the Dispossessed

About La multitud errante / A Tale of the Dispossessed

«Cuando el nivel de la escritura llega hasta donde lo llevó Laura Restrepo, hay que quitarse el sombrero». — José Saramago

¿Cómo puedo yo decirle que nunca la va a encontrar, si ha gastado la vida buscándola? Con esa frase de resonancias míticas, se abre esta intensa historia de amor en medio de las rudezas del desplazamiento forzado. Un personaje enigmático al que llaman Siete por Tres llega a un albergue de peregrinos preguntando por una mujer a la que ha perdido en el tráfago de la guerra. Allí es atendido por una voluntaria extranjera, cuyo interés por el hombre va creciendo más allá del simple apoyo solidario. En el estrecho triángulo que se crea, la ansiedad por encontrar al otro se fusiona con la búsqueda de la tierra prometida. Y del amor: el imposible y, por qué no, también el posible.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

“How can I tell him that he will never find her, after he has been searching for her all his life? If I could talk to him without breaking his heart, there is something I would tell him, in hopes it would stop his sleepless nights and wrongheaded search for a shadow. I would repeat this to him: ‘Your Matilde Lina is in limbo, the dwelling place of those who are neither dead nor alive.’ But that would be like severing the roots of the tree that supports him. Besides, why do it if he is not going to believe me.”
 
In the midst of war, the protagonists of A Tale of the Dispossessed are continuously searching for a promised land, a destiny, the face of a woman who has disappeared — searching for an impossible love and, conversely, for a love that is possible.
 
A way station for refugees from violence is the setting for an intense love triangle in which an uprooted and wandering people lead the reader to experience the collective drama of forced relocation. A Tale of the Dispossessed speaks to us about the inexorable law that has led man, expelled from paradise since the days of Adam through to modern times, in his search for a way back home.