Dead Lands
A violent death unleashes the story of a cursed lineage. Jon was shot in the back, in an isolated house where the only other occupants were his family. Who pulled the trigger? Thirteen characters. Thirteen different points of view. Dead Lands is a kaleidoscopic narrative that unfurls an atavistic universe where characters are burdened by brutal origins, two deaths, and a dark secret. A literary descendant of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, the novel recalls the obsessive rhythm of Thomas Bernhard, and Mercè Rodoreda’s treatment of anguish in Death in Spring. Núria Bendicho’s work asks difficult questions about human nature and takes us into a sordid world, one from which it is difficult to emerge without feeling both anger and compassion.
Núria Bendicho
Núria Bendicho Giró (Barcelona – Catalunya, 1995). I don’t remember the first time I felt I had to write. I must have been eight or nine years old. It wasn’t a mere impulse, but an obligation. I felt I had to be a writer, no matter what it took. My grandfather, who died the year before I was born, left me a large collection of classics of Catalan literature. I dusted them off and devoured them, working my way through writers such as Víctor Català, Aurora Bertrana, Miquel Llor, Juli Vallmitjana. I began to value my own tradition, and felt my heartbeat quicken with every page. Then I turned to Spanish realism, later French naturalism. I stumbled—by chance or luck—on Faulkner, and discovered his disciples. I had found my natural interests: poverty, illness, exploitation, the condition of women, the question of evil. The authors I admired shared similarities that I, too, wished to capture and make mine. I needed to pay homage to those from whom I had learned not only the art of writing, but also, and most importantly, to observe the world around me deliberately, philosophically, with a critical eye. Literature is nothing more than the craft of applying fresh brushstrokes along the path the masters have laid out for you.
Author portrait © Silvia Poch