Institut Ramon LLull

This book is both homage to and exploration of the mystery that is language; a linguistic journey expressed through a father figure, who after suffering a stroke, was left without speech. He then set out on a hike along towering mountains in order to try and regain his ability to talk. In fewer than a hundred pages, they revisit the highest peaks of his life, the lowest pits of his stroke, and follow the torturous paths of his brain along which whole lives can be led astray.

“Marxarons” is a verb which does not exist in any language; it is an expression of mental despair, the only word the author’s father could utter and a symbol of both his inability and impulse to communicate. What cohesion can a subject have if it lacks a grammar? Under which neuronal fold do our identities hide? How is consciousness built without speech?

Here is an emotive book that, while eschewing sentimentalism, narrates with precision and elegance the rise of a literary truth in a place where meaning has perished.