Review of the book “Persecution” by Toni Sala.
By Ander Terrones Arellano.
Toni Sala is a Catalan writer born in 1969 with a long career in both novels and essays. With Persecution (Persecution In its original Catalan version, Sala approaches the darkest corners of the human mind through the use of the first person with dark and tormented characters.
The premise of the novel is simple. Albert Jordi, the character around whom the whole story revolves, confesses to his girlfriend, Èlia, that he spent eight years in prison after killing his then partner, Sara. Èlia’s first reaction is to throw him out of her house, disturbed by the confession. From that action, Persecution It unfolds with Albert Jordi hiding from the world and several people looking for him at one time or another during the play.
The novel, which has several unreal or almost fantastical elements, is set in a very specific moment in the history of Catalonia: the summer of 2017, with the political tension over the upcoming referendum in October and, especially, with the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils. This context helps us delve into the ideas of the characters, which, although they do not determine their actions, do help us to better understand what is happening.
It is a raw story, with criminals telling us their macabre ideas for doing business and Albert Jordi’s justifications for his terrible past. That is why the novel has a very interesting use of the first person: there are four narrators who take turns in the chapters in which they tell of specific actions and their reflections on them. Of course, each one has his own way of speaking and thinking, which is very different from the others. The two men are precisely those with a dark past and present, while the two women are people with traumas but without the evil of the others.
One of the characters is particularly tough. Mercury is an old man that Albert Jordi met in prison and who is particularly evil. The chapters in which Mercury is shown to us through this first person are somewhat confusing, since he tries to convey his thoughts, somewhat deteriorated by the drug he has just consumed. He is a racist, misogynist and rapist, a cocktail that combines with his intelligence but to do evil. A project that he wants to carry out horrifies Albert Jordi himself, who is a cold-blooded killer.
One of the most curious things about Persecution The fact is that all the characters are connected, even though some of them don’t even know each other. As mentioned before, the connection is the search for Albert Jordi, but it’s not just that. Trying to be as realistic as possible, Toni Sala uses the sociopolitical context in which Catalonia was immersed in 2017 to show us that they are all part of the same society, with their own and different ideas. In addition, the places they travel through are the same even if they don’t meet, and places in Catalonia are shown even from the air.
In short, a somewhat cruel read, with passages in which you need a bomb-proof stomach in the face of the horror that is so explicitly presented to us. Therefore, without a doubt, a necessary read to be able to immerse ourselves in dark minds and thus try to better understand the human being himself.
Source: https://algunoslibrosbuenos.com/persecucion-toni-sala
