El alma de los peces
It is the year 1880, in the small Austrian city of Weisberg. At the death of his parents, the young Austrian Bruno Weiss decides to leave for a near-by city because he hates the society that has surrounded him until then. But he soon despises this new city and its inhabitants, so he decides to travel throughout Europe in order to find out if there is anything worth salvaging in human societies. He does not find it and, disappointed by what he discovers in France, Denmark and Spain, returns to Austria with the idea of becoming rich, take over his city and, after gaining absolute power, loathe it, raze and destroy it.
His father was a great mathematician and taught him the magic of numbers. Bruno Weiss, using this knowledge, discovers the law that allows winning at roulette and, once rich, he returns to Weisberg where, with the help of Judge Sendlinger and spurred on by the gaze of a young woman who loves him, the contradictory Stephanie, establishes companies, reaches the city’s town hall and manages to turn his society into a pit of vices which ends up self-destroying itself. His idea to establish a new social order is to destroy Europe so that, from its ashes, he can erect a new empire and a new society.
He finishes his mission in Weisberg, resumes his perverse plans in Laudgen, and then in more and more cities, until he comes face to face with his destiny.
“The Soul of Fishes, quite an admirable short novel.”
J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip. El País. BABELIA