The last Hammett

Juan Sasturain

NARRATIVE. PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE, 2018. 688 PAGES.

'There's always that mixture of theft, envy and homage' said Dash.

It's 1953 and the veteran Dashiell Hammett, on the run from the IRS and the FBI, needs to write a new novel. It won't be easy: the unexpected visit of his comrade in arms, Tulip, only adds to the tension already brewing thanks to his decision to quit drinking and the harassment by an irritating writer from Argentina who's determined to make him read the continuation of a fascinating anecdote from The Maltese Falcon. Adopting a position somewhere between plagiarism and homage, the writer worms his way into Dash's life while the charming Poynton - Gatica's sparring partner - the lawyer Rosen, the beautiful Pat Neal and a skinny kid named Roald Dahl slip in and out of a plot featuring shootings, kidnappings, betrayal and literary conversations that pop up as though they've escaped from the stories that Hammett no longer wants to write.
Obsessive erudition, extraordinarily detailed settings and an imagination that doesn't ask for permission: who better than Juan Sasturain to continue Tulip - the manuscript Hammett left unfinished? This wild, heartfelt unauthorized novel is the result.

«Sasturain's keen ear remakes our language anew: alternating high and low poetry, the erudite with the plain and the popular. Reading his prose, one gets the impression that it's part of an oral tradition. But that toughness, that plainspoken quality, also contains within it plenty of hours spent at the library.»

- Guillermo Saccomanno


«Every writer we care about takes something from the imaginative world of our childhood. Sasturain is best when combines himself - the revelatory childhood that influences everything he touches, voluntarily or otherwise - with the many writers he knows, and goodness does he know them well. As he is, fortunately, quite a discreet man, to investigate him is also to investigate what he has read.»

- Luis Chitarroni

 

«In the novels, poems, articles, stories and every line Sasturain has ever written, there is a tragic secret: his infectious joy.»

- Alfredo Greco y Bavio

 

«A powerful and monstrous work.»

– Jean-Luc Manet, LH Lemagazine

PUBLISHED BY: Spanish ALFAGUARA / NAVONA | France GALLIMARD

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