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Historia del dinero
Argentina, the 1970s.The unions are overwhelmed by the radical left, and the CEO of a steel plant dies after falling from the helicopter he was travelling in. The briefcase full of money he had with him disappears without trace. The theories about his death are multiplying, as are those on what the money was for. Doing business with union reps? Corrupting them? Financing the illegal repression that will end up destroying them? The novel is about this dark episode and uses this key dramatic element á la Costa Gavras to examine the role of money in this novel about families. The narrator's father 'makes' money at poker tables and in casinos and is in his element in the dens of financial speculation; his mother squanders the small fortune she has inherited on a lavish lifestyle and a summer house that is growing out of control and he, meanwhile, is paying for it.
The minute our Panellists looked at Historia del Dinero they were fascinated by it. One of the Panellists, Nick Caistor, knows the author´s work very well as he has translated one of his novels before. Martin Schifino´s report exceeded expectations of the panel and they unanimously decided to include the book in the short list.
The Story of Money, or perhaps A History of Money, is the last novel in a trilogy that Pauls started publishing about five years ago. The other two are A History of Crying and A History of Hair. None of them is yet translated into English, a situation that should be remedied (especially as Pauls’s previous novel, The Past, did very well in over ten languages). (…)
As I said before, A History of Money cries out to be translated, as its two predecessors. And here’s an idea: if the three books were put together you would have a volume about the length of The Past or Bernhard’s Gathering Evidence. It would be great to see in that format, and very effective for marketing purposes. The Buenos Aires Trilogy, anyone? Readers interested in serious fiction would certainly appreciate it, and I think it could become a succès d’estime, in the way that Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle has, despite its tile. In any case, I am sure the book has the potential to reach a foreign readership. Which brings us to translation (…). What I can tell the panel, and even Nick if he hasn’t read the novel yet (but I’m sure he has), is that Pauls’s style has not substantially changed in the last few years, and that he continues to write as well as in the last, expansive section of The Past. If you wonder what an English rendering of History would sound like take a look at that novel. Or take it from me: it would sound wonderful. (From the reader report by Martin Schifino)