Biography
Antón Lopo is a key figure on the contemporary Galician cultural scene. He has published eight poetry collections; Talk to Me won the prestigious Esquío Award. He is also the author of six books of fiction, including the novels Obedience (García Barros Award, 2010) and Extraordinary (Spanish Critics’ Award, 2018). His play Men Only Count to Three earned him the Álvaro Cunqueiro Award. He coordinated the cultural supplement Revista das Letras, his work as a journalist earning him the Johán Carballeira Award. He has written essays on important figures of Galician literature, such as the poets Fermín Bouza-Brey, Uxío Novoneyra and Lois Pereiro. In his own poetry, he acts as a performer, combining the word with other media. He directs the publishing house Chan da Pólvora, which includes among its authors the winner of the 2019 Spanish National Book Award for Poetry, Pilar Pallarés, for Fossil Time.
Synopsis
The fourth novel, Extraordinary, by one of Galicia’s most revered authors, Antón Lopo, is a 160-page, formally innovative exploration of masculinity, queerness, the body, and grotesqueness (à la Carson McCullers), clothed in a family drama about a man’s journey home, back into the heart of his emotional trauma.
Sample
My sister Ana sounds distressed when she calls to tell me that Mom broke her femur. I don’t say anything. I say nothing, and she fills my silence with a [detailed] description of the situation. She knows that bringing up Mom makes me uncomfortable [we’ve avoided this subject in our conversations for years], but “I had no other choice.” She’s exhausted after five days and nights in the hospital, where she only has one free hour to eat. Thankfully, Marisé [an old neighbor] and our cousins from Toldaos have come by a few mornings. But she can’t relax. She’s afraid Mom will die and leave her alone. She asks me for help. “What about Marcos?” I ask. “He says they’re having work done to their house. I really, really need you, Óscar,” she says, and as she does, a ray of sun climbs up from my feet and erupts into my eyes. I’m bound to the past in my memory by a piece of straw so thin that even the smallest motion could break the bind and send pain shooting through my body. I take a deep breath. I search for some calm in the pit of my stomach. My heart is hammering in the palms of my hands. I gulp. “Don’t worry, Ana.”
Portico of Galician Literature 