Playa Bagdad / Bagdad Beach

1,« Qu? es la memoria? Un barril semienterrado en la arena, agua dulce que se enreda con salada, tramos de arena sucia que nadie ha pisado. Marcelo y Miguel, los hermanos Santiago, est?n unidos por una complicidad que solo surge al compartir los primeros a?os de vida: los terrores infantiles, los despertares amorosos, los d?as de enfermedad y las efem?rides familiares. Lo que los separa, en cambio, es la b?squeda de una identidad propia, independiente del otro. En qui?nes nos convertimos cuando nos alejamos de la mirada fraterna? C?mo deseamos ser recordados por la familia? A qui?n le encargamos el retrato definitivo de lo que somos? Antonio Ramos Revillas, con la sensibilidad de quien sabe navegar las aguas alborotadas de la mente, explora estas preguntas a partir de una desaparici?n que llevar? a los personajes a indagar por las calles de Matamoros, Tamaulipas, y las orillas de la Playa Bagdad. Pero, sobre todo, a naufragar por un pasado en com?n, donde la verg?enza y la locura descubren capas que no se ocultan del todo ante la familia, testigo involuntario de nuestros fracasos. Playa Bagdad es una novela de misterio y b?squeda, cuya prosa precisa y arriesgada nos conduce por cambios de perspectiva y giros de fortuna para arrojarnos frente a un faro: s?mbolo del rumbo que se adivina incluso en las noches m?s oscuras. Un relato audaz, tamizado hasta conservar solo la esencia de lo que nos integra. «Antonio Ramos Revillas taladra con su escritura la geograf?a de lo que desaparece: familias, ciudades, historias. Aqu? la memoria es crueldad y esperanza, una novela que no da tregua. -Socorro Venegas ENGLISH DESCRIPTION What is memory? A keg, half-buried in the sand, fresh water entangled with salt water, patches of dirty sand no one has ever stepped on. Marcelo and Miguel, the Santiago brothers, are united by the kind of complicity that only occurs when you share the first years of your life: childhood terrors, romantic awakenings, sick days, and family holidays. What separates them though is the quest for their own identity, independent from one another. Who do we become when we step away from our sibling's eye? How do we wish to be remembered by family? To whom do we commission the final portrait of who we are? With the sensitivity of someone who knows how to sail the mind's troubled waters, Antonio Ramos Revillas explores these very questions after a disappearance takes the characters on a search through the streets of Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and over to the coast of Bagdad Beach. But above all, it makes them capsize over a shared past, where shame and madness uncover layers not entirely hidden from family, an involuntary witness to our failures. Bagdad Beach is a mystery novel about a quest, and its bold and straightforward prose leads us through different perspectives and twists of fate, to then plunge us in front of a lighthouse, symbol of the course you foresee even in the darkest of nights. A fearless tale, sieved until there is nothing left but the essence that conforms us. With his writing, Antonio Ramos Revillas drills the geography of what vanishes: families, cities, histories. Here, memory is cruelty and hope, a novel that gives no respite. --Socorro Venegas