Synopses & Reviews
Christof, Christophe, Christopher, and Cristòfol are four brothers—sons of the same father and four very different mothers—yet none of them knows of the others’ existence. They live in four different cities: Frankfurt, Paris, London, and Barcelona. Unbeknownst to them, they have one thing in common: Gabriel Delacruz—a truck driver—abandoned them when they were little and they never heard from him again.
Then one day, Cristòfol is contacted by the police: his father is officially a missing person. This fact leads him to discover that he has three half-brothers, and the four young men come together for the first time. Two decades have passed since their father last saw any of them. They barely remember what he was like, but they decide to look for him to resolve their doubts. Why did he abandon them? Why do all four have the same name? Did he intend for them to meet?
Divided by geography yet united by blood, the “Christophers” set out on a quest that is at once painful, hilarious, and extraordinary. They discover a man who during thirty years of driving was able to escape the darkness of Franco’s Spain and to explore a luminous Europe, a journey that, with the birth of his sons, both opened and broke his heart.
Review
“Lost Luggage is an astonishing literary artifact. Marvellous.”
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“A conjuring trick. Incomparable literature.”
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“A book as extraordinary as it is memorable. Jordi Puntí already belongs to the noble tradition of the great storytellers.”
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"A novel with an uncommon brilliance, confirming Puntí's talent."
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"Characters with great literary force; they represent the power of fiction when facing history."
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"Pure life, intense and passionate. A thorough and precise creation, very near perfection... one can only surrender to the utter force of the story."
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"A remarkable work of literary fiction that also manages to be unputdownable."
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"Inventive, absorbing and beautifully written."
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"The best contemporary prose available."
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"A funny, moving and poignant exploration of identity, home, family and freedom."
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A conjuring trick. Incomparable literature.
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“Lost Luggage is an ingenious creation, plotted with lovely patterns and symmetries. It is alert to the sheer untidiness of life and filled with the strange connections between public events and private destinies.”
Review
"Punti is a sprightly writer, delighting in taking us down byways and through backwaters as the novel circles Gabriel’s disappearance. But the big, bold self-consciously picaresque storytelling never completely loses sight of the book’s central theme, the ways in which family, and its lack, can shape a life."
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"This is a remarkable work, full of invention and consistently gripping."
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"Everything jostles happily in Jordi Punti. Nuns with a wooden leg, stuffed animals and racehorses. The Franco years, feminism, miniskirts and tear gas in May 68. A delightful first novel."
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"The spark of magical realism enlivens Punti’s debut novel about four abandoned sons... [A] successful experiment in perspective, made lively by Punti’s extensive knowledge of the landscapes of Europe."
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“Punti delivers a richly told literary novel about four half brothers in search of their father… The characters’ wit and the author’s vivid imagination shine through in this beautiful translation from Catalan.”
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"An adept translation of dazzlingly polyphonic fiction."
Synopsis
The prize-winning debut novel from a major new talent in Catalan literature--the story of four half-brothers who only discover the others' existence when the father who abandoned them all is reported missing.
Christof, Christophe, Christopher, and Cristofol are four brothers--sons of the same father and four very different mothers--yet none of them knows of the others' existence. They live in four different cities: Frankfurt, Paris, London, and Barcelona. Unbeknownst to them, they have one thing in common: Gabriel Delacruz--a truck driver--abandoned them when they were little and they never heard from him again.
Then one day, Cristofol is contacted by the police: his father is officially a missing person. This fact leads him to discover that he has three half-brothers, and the four young men come together for the first time. Two decades have passed since their father last saw any of them. They barely remember what he was like, but they decide to look for him to resolve their doubts. Why did he abandon them? Why do all four have the same name? Did he intend for them to meet?
Divided by geography yet united by blood, the "Christophers" set out on a quest that is at once painful, hilarious, and extraordinary. They discover a man who during thirty years of driving was able to escape the darkness of Franco's Spain and to explore a luminous Europe, a journey that, with the birth of his sons, both opened and broke his heart.
Synopsis
The prize-winning debut novel
Synopsis
The prize-winning debut novel
Synopsis
The prize-winning debut novel
About the Author
Jordi Punti is a writer, translator, and a regular contributor to the Spanish and Catalan press. Punti is considered one of the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature. In 1998 he published his first book of short stories, Pell d’armadillo (Proa, 1998) that won the Serra d’Or Critics’ Prize. Lost Luggage is his first novel.