Plagiarios & Cía.

Ricardo Álamo has written a splendid book, with so many crazy cases it seems like a bestiary, even a comedy. He calls it a dictionary, and it is, but it could also be, and should be, read from cover to cover, in order, like non-ancillary or reference books. This dictionary of plagiarism is fun, intelligent, documented and full of wise reflections and anecdotes, following the prescriptive: teach while entertaining and entertain while teaching, sometimes hilarious and sometimes very sad. In few books will the human clay from which we writers are made be better modeled, in none will a more complete collection of clay pedestals be found. Alamo has sown so much throughout these pages, that he will have to get used to seeing how others enter to steal from his book, "in someone else's fence" we would say. This dictionary of plagiarism and plagiarism contains in its pages what many writers would not have wanted to be told. Includes references to Alejandro Dumas, Stendhal, Valle-Inclán, Pío Baroja, Eugenio Noel, Graham Greene, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dalí, Octavio Paz, Josep Pla, Camilo José Cela, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Quim Monzó, Jorge Bucay, Arturo Pérez Reverte, Ana Rosa Quintana, Hillary Clinton, Pedro Sánchez, Julia Maura, Roberto Bolaño, Lucía Etxebarría.