![]() ![]() Swayed by these gentle oscillations of space and time, one wonders whether Franz, the name of a dog lovingly portrayed in the novel, might not be the author's oblique homage to Kafka and his antirealist leanings. But what to make, then, of references to the telegraph, patented in 1840, or to the Paris opera house, the construction of which lasted until 1875? Someone mentions a French revolution 40 years ago in which the working people rose up, so it sounds like it could now be 1829. We know it's the 19th century, yet it's not altogether clear what year or even decade we're in. "Traveler of the Century" is set in an imaginary Prussian city named Wandernburg, where streets and squares, as some characters occasionally note, appear uncannily to change location. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 564 pages $30)Īndrés Neuman, the Argentine-Spanish author listed by Granta in 2010 as one of the Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists, has crafted a tale stranger than most fiction. ![]()
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