A top class employee for a world-class hotel. The Samarcanda Hotel is recruiting! Máximo, seventeen years, three-hair beard, determined to get out of childhood, puts himself forward. A lonely teenager, obsessive, fond of scientific journals and fascinated by thought processes, he is convinced that this experience will be his real entry into the adult world. As it often happens however, nothing is in line with expectations, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. The more our hero grows, the more the mysterious and exciting world around him shrinks. The only way to cope will be to live in it here and now! Pablo Casacuberta depicts with touching insight the loneliness of adolescence, the suffocating desire for love, the terror of never being taken seriously. This short breath-taking novel, splendidly written, is one of the best things we have ever read on the delicate art of growing.

“Aquí y ahora is a window open to the vast world, reduced to a Kafkaesque hotel beaten down by rain and wind.” L’HUMANITÉ

“A coming of age novel that pinches the heart and squeezes the throat with emotion…Our amazement, and our admiration. “ L’ECHO

“Pablo Casacuberta renders with poignant acuity the loneliness of adolescence, the stifling desire for love, the absence of an interlocutor – father, daughter or friend -, the terror of never being taken seriously.” TRANSFUGE

 

180 pages – Original language: Spanish (Estuario Editorial, Montevideo, 2002); Foreign Editions: Italian (Polidoro, 2023), French (Métailié, 2017), Spanish (Ediciones Era, Mexico), Spanish/audio (Bookmate, 2022), Spanish (Aurora, Colombia)