ORCHESTRA
MIQUI OTERO
An electric tale written with magic and precision.
“There is silence, so there was music. There is death, so there was life. There is nobody, so everyone passed through here. The whole story in one night and the whole world in one place.”
Dawn in Valdeplata after the summer festival. The grass is littered with dead starlings, a torn ticket, a red bicycle, a trainer covered in blood. The orchestra played all night and the young and the old danced to the same songs, keeping different secrets. They were kept by the Count, an old man who could die at any moment (and with him an ancient world of magic and fear). And by Ventura, a lorry driver who finally took out his sequined dress, and by Placeres, dreaming of revenge and forbidden loves. They danced and they drank and they seemed to understand each other, old lovers, mortal enemies, lost youths. This story is told by the Music, which is inside and outside of each of them, as well as you. Music that reminds the living that they are alive, and summons the dead.
Published in Spain: Alfaguara, 2021
Miqui Otero debuted in 2010 with the acclaimed novel Hilo musical (Alpha Decay, 2010), winner of the FNAC New Talent Award, and two years later came La cápsula del tiempo (Blackie Books, 2012), Rockdelux book of the year. He has written regularly in media such as El País and Cultura/s La Vanguardia and is now a columnist for El Periódico. He also teaches journalism and literature at the UAB. With Rayos (Blackie Books, 2016), celebrated by the critics as the new "great novel of Barcelona", he established himself as one of the most outstanding and imaginative voices on the Spanish literary scene. In 2020 he published Simón (Blackie Books, 2020), an ode to the novel, which won the Ojo Crítico Prize and appeared on all the best-of-the-year lists of the main Spanish titles, as well as winning the favour of the public and critics and several international editions, including Italian and French. His latest novel to date is Orquesta (Alfaguara, 2024), an impressive novel as mystical as it is joyful. @MiquiOtero