The posthumous short novel by the Huachano writer, Pedro Félix Novoa Castillo, born in 1974, will be published. In this novel, Novoa presents an interesting mix between reality and fiction. The narrator is himself trying to write a story about a famous escape artist known as Prometheus. Through the narrative, Novoa intertwines biographical details of his own life and his frustrations as a writer with the hectic life and performances of the artist.
The novel explores themes such as escapism, artistic creation, the search for transcendence and the questioning of the limits between reality and fiction. Prometheus performs risky death-defying escape acts, making him a kind of living myth. Meanwhile, Novoa struggles to find a great story to give to his pen, always branded as an “escapist” by critics.
Novoa was in a certain way, evading the path of the Peruvian canon embedded in national literature, which requires the writer to self-censor fantastic themes because he considers them second-rate, he imposed himself with raging independent works, such as his award-winning “The Symphony of Destruction.” ”, although published on a major label, it maintained that disruptive air, more typical of a cyberpunk writer than of one dozed by the bourgeois pen. Pedro’s prose is rich in images and metaphors, with influences from magical realism. At the same time, it incorporates quotes, intertextual nods and reflections on the writing profession. This generic hybrid and literary richness turns the novel into a unique, challenging reading experience that plays with the reader’s expectations and forces him to question the limits between fantasy and reality.
Macckeey Soto Aguirre, editor, says that he opted for “The Escapist” because of the strength of the novel. “It’s a promise she had with him. Pedro Novoa is one of the best writers that he has produced this century, although it is difficult for some to accept it.
And he is right, it is a very well done novel that plays with the concepts of reality, fiction, myth and artistic performance. Or perhaps, even more, it is the novel with which Novoa reaffirms to us that he never really died, that he is there, in California enjoying a show on the beach or in his native Huacho, writing his next furious hit. In any case, Pedro has already escaped from what we writers fear: inconsequentiality.
