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ALMA
Javier Moreno
Translated by Peter Kahn
This is not a book. As the title suggests, this is a soul: an Alma.
But a soul, make no mistake about it, is not something from another world. It is a conglomeration of images and words, reproductive data made available to anyone for the satisfaction of the democratic and mephistophelian instinct (who has never desired the soul of another?). This novel speaks to what we are--or are not--prepared to share. Maybe we don't know yet what intimacy is, maybe it is the negative of our own image. It is also possible that the only intimacy left to us is that of words.
“The only possible points of comparison for Javier Moreno’s Alma, a book made of sentences, dealing with the materiality of the living, and obsessed with sorting, would be those texts that are most luminous and uncanny. Alma, unlike anything else I have read, brings together certain amazing qualities of Craig Dworkin’s Legion (which consists entirely of statements from a psychiatric diagnostic instrument), of the more radical of David Markson’s novels, and of the quietly fevered voices from the writing of Roberto Bolaño. Is it a soul? A novel? Interesting questions – but in any case, Alma is a configuration of words that demands to be sorted through, one that is compellingly unhinged, open and shut.”
Nick Montfort
Media Studies at MIT
"A whole book of poems or an entire novel could be written out of every three sentences from this book, a sequence of sharp, strictly poetic and intelligent concatenations, neither pretentious nor forced"
Agustin Fernandez Mallo,
author of Nocilla Dream
JAVIER MORENO (Murcia, Spain), is a Spanish writer, poet, and literary critic known for his innovative exploration of contemporary themes such as identity, technology, and the porous boundaries between reality and virtuality. He holds degrees in Mathematics and Comparative Literature from the University of Murcia and the Complutense University of Madrid, respectively, and currently works as a secondary school mathematics teacher. His literary career spans poetry, fiction, and essay, with notable works including the novels Click (winner of the FNAC New Talent Award), Alma (finalist for the Premio Mandarache), and Null Island. In poetry, he received acclaim for Cortes publicitarios, which won the Miguel Hernández National Prize, and Acabado en diamante, recipient of the La Garúa International Prize. Moreno’s recent work, Magnífica desolación (2023), is a collection of four novellas that reflect his preoccupation with artificial intelligence and posthuman landscapes. As a literary critic, he has contributed to publications such as Revista de Letras and Quimera, establishing himself as a key voice in contemporary Spanish literature.