Colonel Lagrimas

“Beware, reader, in these pages you will experience vertigo, anxiety and joy. You will become a ghostly presence in a Borgesian world, a camera obscura, where mathematics is a secret weapon, and memory the object of an archaeological pursuit. Loosely inspired by the eventful life of the French mathematician Alexander Grothendieck, Fonseca has created a gorgeous opera prima . . . Colonel Lágrimas is playful and experimental in the tradition of writers like Calvino and Queneau. Fonseca employs the magic of perspective and shifting angles to summon a Cubist portrait of a very sleepy, insouciant old man who witnessed some of the great political events of the 20th century, from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam . . . Deftly translated, the voice remains sedate, elegant, whispered even; we wouldn’t want to wake the colonel.”

—Valerie Miles, The New York Times Book Review

“So much of the writing in Carlos Fonseca Suárez’s Colonel Lágrimas was just gorgeous, and Megan McDowell’s translation from the original Spanish managed to keep the beautiful complexity of the language intact.”

—Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews, 2016 Reviewer’s Choice

"An intriguing and unforgettable verbal kaleidoscope."

—Ricardo Piglia, author of Target in the Night and Artificial Respiration

“A true feat of literary ventriloquism and cinematic control, tinged with a humor and melancholy inspired by the human condition. Whether we think of it as a game of masks or as a Cubist portrait, Fonseca's novel reads like an Oulipian puzzle where historical memory can play hide-and-seek . . . The novel has a panoramic and worldly vision. There's something vast, all-embracing, and decidedly humanist about the project.”

—Chloe Aridjis, BOMB

“In this pretty puzzle, Fonseca tests the limits of fiction . . . Fonseca’s narration mimics the meandering matrix of memory or an esoteric police procedural by Jorge Luis Borges . . . For lovers of literary and Latin American postmodern fiction.”

—Sara Martinez, Booklist

“Reading [Fonseca’s] work, one feels the presence of voices as disparate as those of W.G. Sebald, Alexander Von Humboldt, Simón Bolívar and Roberto Bolaño, among others. Fonseca is, without a doubt, a cosmopolitan offspring of cultural globalization as well as an attentive inheritor of both literary and cultural history . . . Through an attentive and rigorous attention to detail, Fonseca is able to construct a collage where the mathematician’s life finds its ultimate meaning amidst a series of series of historical, metaphysical and poetic fragments that end up giving shape to a fascinating literary artifact that shines like an eclectic mosaic . . . Colonel Lágrimas is a novel that showcases the craft of writing. Throughout its pages, it becomes apparent that its writerly resources are managed with a certain fluency and experimentation but, at the same time, with notable confidence.”

—Tomás Peters, Electric Literature

“Though the novel nods mostly to García Márquez, Fonseca plays with the possibilities of hypertext raised by Julio Cortázar, and there are hints of Bolaño and perhaps even of younger contemporary Daniel Galera . . . a lively, smart study of a decidedly offbeat character.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“In the process of this game of coding and decoding, Fonseca deploys a torrent of vital and poetic ideas within a singular yet fascinating literary artifact…. [Colonel Lágrimas makes me think of] Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, W.G. Sebald, Borges, Juan Rulfo.”

—Gunter Silva, Words without Borders

“Colonel Lágrimas is a clever book, slightly claustrophobic in its setting, but spanning the globe through its focus on the old man’s memories…. It’s beautifully written, with more good work here by the excellent McDowell…. [The tedium of the Colonel’s life,] in Fonseca’s hands, far from being something to grieve, becomes a celebration of a life less ordinary.”

—Tony Malone, Tony’s Reading List