A book a day: Béla Braun: The previous body

Original Language: Español
Year of publication: 2025
Valoración: BETWEEN OK AND RECOMMENDED

Béla Braun has a film director name Hungarian, of writer Centroeuropeo del Delivery Period, included, Nazi war criminal. Nothing is further from reality because Béla Braun is a Mexican writer and journalist born in 1977 (as if to trust the names!) And this The previous body It is his third novel.

And not if this is casual or not, or if these associations are easier to do when this data is known, but the case is that in The previous body I see Central European influences and echoes from Mexican authors, as well as some other essential author of the twentieth century. And is that

The previous body = (Romantic Gothic + (0.4*Ibargüengotia) + (0.1*Cartararescu) + (0.3*Borges))/2

How do you eat this? Well, look, with a dazzling and spectral beauty woman who breaks into the life of a young suburbs, a martial arts, dislocations and unfolding of reality, doors to other worlds, etc. Do you understand anything?

Let’s see. What if I say that, after all, The previous body Is it a training novel? Better, right? What if I say that it is a formation novel that somehow brushes the fantastic genre? We are approaching. What if I say formation novel that somehow brushes the fantastic genre but while being anchored to Mexican reality? Now yes!

Why The previous body It is the story of a search and a flight (Go ahead, change your life, go out with other people, leave the past behind, they say) narrated in the first person and in which the past and present are mixed in the memory demonstrating, once again, that time is not a linear dimension that always advances in the same sense.

I think that three are the most achieved aspects of the novel: the spectral atmosphere that Ishtar generate the appearances, the atmosphere that accompanies that atmosphere (I speak in particular of physical spaces) and the closest part to Ibargüengoitia, with its tragic-grooting realism. But these three aspects work well (and very well, at times) as isolated elements; Instead, I would say that his lace in the whole does not just be fully achieved. Wow, the classic “The whole is lower than the sum of the parts.”

What is undeniable is that The previous body It is an original, ambitious and risky novel and that is a merit that we cannot take Braun. Nor can we deny that it is a enjoyable and usable book, although I can completely reach the dimensions it promised.