The Difficult Light

The Difficult Light

Novel
Year: 2023.
Editorial: Sexto Piso.

A Moving Novel About a Father’s Love for His Son, Celebrating Life in All Its Brightness

It’s seven in the morning when David is jolted awake by a pang of anguish in his gut: the day has come when his son Jacobo is scheduled to die. Paralyzed after a car accident, Jacobo suffers from excruciating pain that has made life unbearable. His brother has taken him to Portland, far from their family apartment in New York, where a doctor will assist him in ending his life. Meanwhile, David waits for news, enduring the slow passing of hours, wondering if Jacobo might change his mind at the very last moment.

Almost twenty years later, with dimming eyesight but vivid memories, David recalls those New York days, his son’s devastating accident, and, above all, the long wait on that fateful day—desperately wishing time would stand still as he loses himself in working on his last painting. In this work, he painstakingly strives to capture the elusive reflection of light on water, as though everyone’s lives depend on it.

A novel of serene emotion and vibrant beauty, perfect in its understated simplicity, The Difficult Light firmly establishes Tomás González as one of the most significant authors in the Spanish language. It is a story about pain and the nearness of death, yet it celebrates life in all its luminosity.

"Upon its release in Colombia, The Difficult Light was hailed as a quiet masterpiece. Years ago, a literary magazine called González ‘the best-kept secret in Colombian literature’; since then, he has become one of his country’s most important novelists and continues to gain readers. Perhaps it’s time to call him something else.”
—Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Guardian

"One of the best Latin American writers of recent years."
—Carlos Pardo, Babelia

"Reading him, I felt that Tomás González is a writer of great purity, someone with the potential to become a classic of Latin American literature."
—Elfriede Jelinek

 

Rights sold to: 

Italy (La Nuova Frontiera);
Denmark (Aurora Boreal);
English World (Archipelago Books);
Brazil (Bertrand);
France (Seuil);
Germany (Fischer);
Korea (Thousand Books);
The Netherlands (Signatuur)

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