While the events told in this book are mostly true, some are the result of the demands of fiction, whose rules are different from the rules of such genres as testimony or autobiography; for that reason I would like to mention here what the Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina once said, as a reminder and a warning: “A drop of fiction taints everything as fictional.” When my father read the manuscript of this book, he thought it was important to make some observations that reflect his perspective on the narrated events and correct certain errors; the text that gathers these observations, and which is the first example of the type of reactions this book is intended to provoke, can be found at http://patriciopron.blogspot.com/p/elespiritu-de-mis-padres-sigue.html under the title “The Record Straight.”
I would like to thank here those people who have supported and encouraged the writing of this book and the authors whose works have been points of reference and inspiration for me, particularly Eduardo De Grazia. I would also like to thank Mónica Carmona and Claudio López Lamadrid, my editors at Random House Mondadori, and Rodrigo Fresán, Alan Pauls, Miguel Aguilar, Virginia Fernández, Eva Cuenca, Carlota del Amo and Alfonso Monteserín; also Andrés “Polaco” Abramowski for the part about the minute that runs away from the clock so it won’t ever have to happen. This book is for my parents, Graciela “Yaya” Hinny and Ruben Adalberto “Chacho” Pron, and for my sister and brother, Victoria and Horacio, but also for Sara and for Alicia Kozameh, for “Any” Gurdulich and Raúl Kantor and for their comrades and their children. This book is also for Giselle Etcheverry Walker:
She is good to me
And there’s nothing she doesn’t see
She knows where I’d like to be
But it doesn’t matter.
A Note About the Author
Patricio Pron, born in 1975, is the author of three story collections and four previous novels, and he also works as a translator and critic. His fiction has appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story and The Paris Review, and has received numerous prizes, including the Juan Rulfo Short Story Prize and the Jaén Novel Prize. He lives in Madrid.
For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com
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