“A quixotic enterprise concerned with a quixotic enterprise founded on a desire to understand and memorialize a succession of quixotic enterprises.”—Leo Robson, New York Times
“Guebel’s prose throughout, in the able hands of his gifted translator Jessica Sequeira, adds to the many pleasures of this wholly original text. Guebel’s great novel is a timely reminder of why our translators are our best travel writers, bringing us on excursions and to places that we can only ever read about.”—Michael Cronin, The Irish Times
“Argentine writer Guebel’s exceptional English-language debut serves up the multigenerational tale of the historical Deliuskin-Scriabin family, a motley bunch of artists, scientists, and politicians. Guebel begins with the story of composer Frantisek Deliuskin, who, in 18th-century Russia, finds inspiration in sex (“It’s like living in a heaven that flows with scents and skins and moans,” he writes in a journal). Then there’s Frantisek’s son, Andrei, orphaned as a child, whose annotations of St. Ignatius Loyola’s work are used by Lenin to organize 1917’s Russian Revolution. Esau Deliuskin, Andrei’s son, leads a Robin Hood–style gang, escapes from prison after being convicted for an assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, then leads a failed socialist settlement. Esau’s son, Alexander Scriabin, who is lost in a crowd at age three from his mother and twin, Sebastian, before the others embark for Buenos Aires, is raised for a time by Russian soldiers and later employed by a controversial writer and mystic. Later, he becomes a famous pianist with an unfinished masterpiece. Sebastian Deliuskin, who grows up in Argentina and also becomes a pianist, has a daughter who narrates the book. As the characters experience love, jealousy, and despair, Guebel offers erudite meditations on music, art, and philosophy, all marked by a superb use of language. This is best savored slowly.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Intellectually adventurous, multigenerational novel of a family’s quest to find meaning in the world. . . . A Borges-ian masterwork that neatly blends magic realism, mysticism, and off-color yarns into a superb whole.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“There is a Guebelian style, and it’s so rare for a writer to have a style (it’s so rare for someone who writes to be a real writer) that one just has to accept it.”
—César Aira
“Guebel is a genius. He is the best novelist of his generation, my generation. The most solid of our great authors.”
—Luis Chitarroni
“His writing is a tour de force. This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. This is the only novel I would have wanted to write. It’s the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is.”
—Pablo Gianera, La Nación
“Guebel writes from that crystal frontier where creativity meets madness, where imagination meets delirium. His cast of eccentrics often reminds us of Borges’ characters, but of a Borges gone wild.”
—Carlos Fonseca, author of Natural History
“The Absolute is an extraordinary novel, an exploration of memory and music, of social history, science and family ties. Guebel’s remote ancestor is Richard Burton and his Anatomy of Melancholy; his contemporaries, Norman Manea and W.G. Sebald.”
—Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading
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