Mondays at Zenda. Mondays of Spanish-language narrative. This Monday, in this case, about Before the Thirst, the first novel by Galician writer Lara Dopazo Ruibal (Marín, 1985), published by the publisher La Uña Rota. Building on her career as a poet, Dopazo constructs in the pages of Before the Thirst the story of a relationship with a strong lyrical breath: one that is woven, between mystery and wonder, by a dowser and the mountain that inhabits it. This approach, however, does not originate from an anthropological paradigm: on the contrary, the author aims to approach those logics from which the other, in this case the non-human, can arrive and actually comes to speak to us.
“How does one return to before the thirst?”
The publisher themselves notes, regarding the book: “There was a mountain and there was a man. He searches for water beneath the stone; she, who had never before had a name, discovers something older than water: desire.
Before the Thirst is the story of an impossible encounter between a dowser and the land that dwells. Lara Dopazo Ruibal crafts a hypnotic, almost mythic narrative, in which the mountain learns, through the man who traverses it, sings to it and names it, what it means to love, to wait, to fear loss. It also learns the most feared word: thirst.
Written in a prose that oscillates between poetry and fable, it advances through seasons, through winters that freeze desire and springs that overwhelm it, while the mountain asks what life is, what death is, and whether the two, in fact, are the same thing.
A book of strange beauty, as fluid as an underground current, about the consciousness born from contact with the other and the fear that something may be missing.
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Author: Lara Dopazo Ruibal. Title: Before the Thirst. Publisher: La Uña Rota. Available at: Todos tus libros.