review
A hugely imaginative work of historical fiction from bestselling Austrian novelist Arno Geiger, Journey to Laredoimagines the last weeks in the life of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who died in 1558. Although the Emperor’s final year was in fact spent in retirement in a monastery in Extremadura, Geiger takes the ailing ruler on a fantastical journey to the Spanish seaside town of Laredo, where he hopes to fulfil a last wish: to bathe in the sea.
Divided into three sections, the narrative has deliberate gaps, creating a sense of opaque surrealism. The novel opens at the monastery in Yuste to which Charles V really did retreat, and we meet both the main protagonist and his illegitimate son, Geronimo, who will later assist his pain-riddled father in escaping incognito. Though little happens beyond the occasional family visit, we develop a sense of Charles’s deep Catholic faith, his grief for his dead wife, his personal authority and his desire to become anonymous.
Realising that ‘the night is long. Life short’, Charles sets out for Laredo, assisted by his young son. On a rain-swept journey they stumble upon brother and sister Honza and Angelita, who are ‘cagots’, members of a minority community, and as such are being persecuted and attacked by a thuggish mob. The two also become companions to the Emperor, travelling with him through a landscape populated by mythical creatures; eventually the party settles in a former silver-mining town. Here, the Emperor begins to lose money gambling against their wily landlord, necessitating a further escape before they eventually reach Laredo.
Geiger concludes his novel back in the real world, with the household at Yuste being disbanded following the Emperor’s death. Servants bearing a vague resemblance to Honza and Angelita are leaving, suggesting that the journey to Laredo was perhaps nothing more than a laudanum-fuelled dream.
Regardless of these whys and wherefores, Journey to Laredo is a dazzling display of novelistic skill and imagination. Incorporating themes such as social discrimination, imperialism and how we cope with impending death, it is striking in its language and almost Proustian detail. Allowing a famous traveller to undertake one final journey, this is a highly original and gripping meditation on what makes a good life.
Rights sold: France, Gallimard; the Netherlands, Bezige Bij
And out more: https://www.hanser-literaturverlage.de/en/buch/arno-geiger-reise-nach-laredo-9783446281189-t-5371
All recommendations from Autumn 2024