El año del Búfalo

This is a novel about four artists from a generation without luck who, after having lost their dreams and ideals, find themselves confined in a garage where one fine day a strange creature appears and offers them a sinister pact. This is a novel about the life of a Finnish writer in love with Spain named Folke Ingo, who happens to be the author of the adventures of the four aforementioned guys. This is a novel about a diverse group of characters who, from the footnotes, apostille and comment on Folke Ingo's text: his Spanish translator, his Finnish mother, a bureaucratic professor at the Ministry of Humanities, the parents of one of the artists locked in the garage, the president of the Club de Amigos de Gregorio Morán and the former director of a peculiar cinema club in Santa Coloma de Gramenet. This is a novel about a series of psychophonies in which an infinity of historical figures appear, made up of rebels with a cause, murdered idealists, revolutionary leaders, guerrillas turned heads of state, hired coup plotters and dictators from around the world. From Agostinho Neto to Lumumba. From Franco to Mussolini. This is a novel about political utopias and harsh realities where Klaus Barbie, Modiano, Gaddafi, Bing Crosby, ColaCao, Los Conguitos, Mauriat, Mauriac, Maurois, Detective Cannon, the CNT, Colonel Sanders of Kentucky fried chicken coexist, José Luis López Vázquez and Joseph Beuys, among many others. This is a novel -as its title indicates- about the Chinese year of the Buffalo, which fell in 1973, but also in previous and subsequent years, such as 1961 and 1985. This is a novel about...