Coreografías espirituales

USA / Open Letter Books

“Labbé keeps overtaking a propose that combines the wit in formal experimentation with a writing of rare density, a surrounding and musical prose that is well tuned with the plot of the novel. Proposes the reader a multiple‐entrances labyrinth, a game that supported much more in its style fluidity than in its plot thread. Rodrigo Pinto, El País

“Clearly thoughtful, intelligent, well assembled, and despite it all, unsettling and terrifying.” Patricia Espinosa,
Las Últimas Noticias

Here’s a story where novelty is not at odds with the best of tradition; a fertile prose that draws from the classics and projects into the future without being banal; a novel without enre but threatening to all genres.
Bedridden before a screen, a paraplegic vocalist writes with the pupil and eyelids the story of a famous rock band. Before this unspeakable text, the rest of the band decides to correct the episodes. The tracks in English and Mapudungun, however, lead to a previous memory submitted to the Empire and Counter-empire that keeps the world subdued.
This novel by Carlos Labbé is a musical anti-biography, but it’s also the fable of the political movement that managed to impose justice to a country. The emotional account of a couple and the shattered genealogy of a rural family that brings up an urban only child. Looking glass of the possibilities of a confessional tale, Coreografías espirituales amplifies the work of one of the most relevant and unclassifiable contemporary Hispanic narrators.