Call Me Brooklyn

I read a transcript of an interview by Carlos Rodríguez (of Críticas) with Eduardo Lago, author of Llámame Brooklyn. The interview wasn’t very informative, but it made me want to read his book. Lago talked to Rodríguez about the art of writing, being a foreigner in New York, and his nostalgia for a long-gone Brooklyn.

Here’s an abstract:

Eduardo Lago (Madrid, 1954) surprised Spain's literary world when he won the prestigious Premio Nadal 2006 with his first novel, Llámame Brooklyn (Call Me Brooklyn). In an atmosphere of distrust towards literary prizes, particularly the Premio Planeta, critics and the public have embraced, with enthusiasm, a literary work that makes no commercial concessions.

Through an ingenious structure that jumps from narrator to narrator and spans several decades, Llámame Brooklyn follows the life of Gal Ackerman, a Spanish orphan adopted by a brigadier during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and raised in Brooklyn, NY. When Ackerman dies, his close friend, Néstor Oliver-Chapman, rescues the manuscript of a novel Ackerman was working on and finishes it with the help of Frank Otero, a Galician who owns the Oakland bar in Brooklyn.

A series of unusual and unforgettable characters parade through the pages, from the clients of the Oakland who are trapped in a rather fatal destiny to Russian music student Nadia Orlov, the object of Ackerman's obsession and the only reader he wants for his novel. Llámame Brooklyn also pays homage to real-life artists like painter Mark Rothko and writers Felipe Alfau and Thomas Pynchon.