The Past

by Alan Pauls

Translated from the original Spanish by Nick Caistor

Rímini splits up with his girlfriend of twelve years, Sofía. The parting is initially amicable and he moves on, carefree, with a new zest for life. Hungry to make up for lost time and keen to forget the past, he finds a younger girlfriend and starts using cocaine.

Sofía, however, finds herself unable to let go, and continues to reappear on Rímini’s horizon. As hard as Rímini tries to forget, Sofía will not let him. Though the apparently idyllic relationship is over, their love has not died, merely taken on a different form. As time passes and their paths continue to cross, the past festers and torments them, like an infection

(From Publisher).

Alan Pauls was born in Buenos Aires in 1959. He has worked as a university lecturer, scriptwriter, film critic and, more recently, as a journalist. He has published four novels, including the much-praised Wasabi. The Past has been published in several foreign languages, and it was the unanimously acclaimed winner of the 2003 Herralde Prize

A very dense story that evolves tracking the lives of two characters that, together or apart are, linked in a very deep way. A particular sense of humour, dark, bizarre, keeps us going on trying to figure out what it is all about, without losing the whole perspective in which, everyone can identify oneself once in a while. The book deals with obsessions, with extremes, and meandering pleasant and unpleasant situations at the end makes the reading worth a lot. It sure does.

Pauls is a well know name in the faculty. His book while intimate is considered to be a very good description of those feelings involved in a couple's rupture as they are narrated by the man. Good mastery of human communications gives the book a nice picture of the woman and women.