Dublinesque

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE'A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.' Roberto BolañoSamuel Riba is about to turn 60.

A successful publisher in Barcelona, he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety and, looking for distraction, he concocts a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin, a city he has never visited but once dreamed about. He sets off for Dublin on the pretext of honouring James Joyce’s Ulysses on Bloomsday.

But as he and his friends gather in the cemetery to give their orations, a mysterious figure in a mackintosh resembling Joyce’s protégé Samuel Beckett hovers in the background.

Is it Beckett, or is it the writer of genius that Riba has spent his whole career trying, and failing, to find?