The Writer
Raúl Sanz García
Editorial inexistente 2026, 232 pp.
Currently available in Spanish only
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What if there were a secret society set on wiping literary rubbish off the face of the earth?
This is the story of José González, a mediocre would-be writer who is dragged into a singular literary epic. It is Fermín Cerro — a caustic and celebrated author — who pulls him out of his delusions of success and sets him face to face with the harsh reality of the literary world. For Cerro, the decline of letters is the decline of the world itself: rubbish and stupidity cover everything. To fight back against such a tragedy, a secret conclave has designed a grandiloquent, preposterous plan — the Great Universal Purge: to wipe from the world’s memory the millions of written works that fall short of a minimum standard of quality. To that end, they are recruiting henchmen like JG, whom they entrust with the all-important task of selecting the small handful of novels of “science fiction and fantasy in Spanish” to be spared. With similar assignments, a parade of picturesque figures will appear, each with their own allotted niche.
The counterweight comes in the form of a mysterious unfinished manuscript that Fermín Cerro hands to José: the intimate account of a man who withdraws to an abandoned rural world in search of silence. That text, lyrical and existential in tone, serves as solace for the disappointments that will strike the defenceless protagonist. From that point on, his undertaking will be to find a story that completes the manuscript, so that it can be published under his own name alongside that of the prestigious Fermín Cerro.
Along the way, José will meet Azucena Panadero, an enigmatic poet who opens up a third narrative plane: a story of fantasy and love that promises to redeem him from his failures and reconcile him with his own voice.
The Writer is a novel about creation, mediocrity, the ego, the love of literature, and the search for meaning in a world saturated with noise. An ironic, tender, and critical story for readers who enjoy intelligent novels with humour, metaliterature, and an emotional undercurrent.
ISBN (print): 979-8242208384