David Collin

Les Cercles mémoriaux

«His survival was miraculous. He knew nothing about his fate. He heard no rumours. He could no longer see. He slipped into night without a word, without having recovered his powers of speech.»

Who is this man stranded in the Gobi Desert? What brought him here? The 'Castaway' is found by a caravan, and it soon becomes clear that he has forgotten everything. He knows nothing about his past and has no idea why or how he has come to this rather forbidding place. With the help of a shaman he tries to reconstruct his past. He wants to understand who he is and what his previous life was like. How did he become the man he is now? To do this, he has to travel halfway across the world. Small clues and scraps of memory gradually piece themselves together and help him regain his identity, and with it his name: Elias Alejandro Esquivel. Shen-li, a Chinese photographer, is his companion on this journey. First she takes him to an archaeological excavation site. Later they travel together through Ulan Bator and Shanghai and then all the way to Buenos Aires. Along the way, Shen-li continues to take photos. The captions to the photos become part of the novel – but without the images.
According to his identity papers which eventually turn up, Elias comes from Argentina. There, he is ultimately confronted with the consequences of the military dictatorship of the 1970s. In Buenos Aires, Elias searches for the truth about his life. He becomes an archaeologist of memory: his own.

(Martin Zingg, trans. by Marcy Goldberg)

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia:
www.12swissbooks.ch

Translation of title: Memorial Circles

L'Escampette Editions, Poitou-Charentes (F) 2012

ISBN: 978-2-35608-040-0