Rights Information

The publishing house Códices Azules owns the copyright of the work "Today is Wednesday" in Spanish and in all the countries of the world.

Marketing Information

Book selected by New Spanish Books in the USA, UK, France and Germany countries

Reviews

Hoy es miércoles, by Patricio Nouveau, is an adventure novel in the magical realism literary tradition. It is divided into three books: The Book of Gilmar, The Book of Lãnh, The Book of Sas. Each child narrates his or her own book.

The story unfolds in what seems like a dream state. Gilmar knows he must find his way to the next lighthouse, but he does not know why. Lãnh rides a water buffalo and comes to a halt at a bridge because she knows what she seeks is on the other side, but she does not know what it is. They are aided in their quests by a grumpy teenager who makes kites, a blind old man who paints wooden fish, and a train conductor clad in a mining helmet. The reader accompanies them as they inexorably make their way toward something.

Each child has a distinct voice with different syntax and lexicon. The Book of Gilmar is narrated in Bolivian Spanish peppered with words in phrases in Quechua; The Book of Lãnh has many Vietnamese expressions and a smattering of French; and The Book of Sas includes dialogue in Greenlandic and Mende. Though the context always makes the dialogue clear enough, there is also a glossary at the end of the book.

This is an adventure, but it is much more than that. It is an examination of mental processes such as idea, imagination, learning, thought, dream. It is a coming-of-age story and a tale of redemption. It is a book about child soldiers, a topic that merits much more attention than it receives. And it is an utterly unique approach to this topic.

The physical book itself, too, is unique. Childish drawings of fish are hand-colored by developmentally disabled persons working in a Spanish workshop. Each copy is signed by the colorer. More elaborate, handmade editions are available.

The author writes of places he knew in life. As an aid worker, he witnessed conflict and hardship in many places, including the countries of the children of this book. In 1998, when he was working for peace in Angola during a conflict involving thousands of child soldiers, he disappeared.

The cover of Hoy es miércoles reads, “Children whose future has been stolen have only their imagination.” The author, too, was robbed of his future, but his imagination lives on in this masterful, baffling, joyful, heartbreaking work. This is an important book.

Author Biography

Patricio Nouveau was born in France in 1971 and educated in Spain. He graduated in Law and has an international aid worker since 1992. He was the youngest speaker at the 5th International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994). In 1996 he worked on the Hispano-Peruvian Cooperation Programme for Training of the Judicial Powers and in supporting the agricultural producers of the Bolivian Altiplano. In 1997 he addressed the Franco-African Summit in Ouagadougou, Bur­kina Faso. From Brazzaville, he reported to the Obser­va­toire Français de la Cooperation Inter­na­tionale on the impoverishment of the former colonies. From Freetown, he exposed the situation of child soldiers fighting in the civil war in Sierra Leone. In the same year he supervised the demobilisation of rebel UNITA troops, a group that has at least 7,000 child soldiers. At the end of 1998 Patricio Nouveau disappeared in Angola.