A Luminous Republic: Andrés Barba

This is a slippery, elusive fable and all the better for not being easily pinned down. I see Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness being mentioned but it made me think about The Midwich Cuckoos and Animal Farm - a stretch which gives some indication of the potentialities contained within this book and the spectrum of interpretations it enables.Barba throws all kinds of themes into the mix and it's a measure of the authorial control asserted that this never becomes chaotic or messy: there are omens and superstitions, not least in the way the civil servant narrator overlays a pattern of his personal crime and punishment on the narrative he tells us; a representation of 'othering' and scapegoating, of the scorn and fear that can arise from the different or unknown; a discussion of language, how it may be misunderstood or fail to be understood even when it is perfectly comprehensible: how comprehension may be a choice; and a lot on the mythology of childhood where children are literal and also a kind of archetype for humanity. There's a telling moment early in when food presents left on people's door-steps overnight are destroyed causing rage - but then we learn 'they'd drawn smiley faces in the flour... this had been done out of sheer joy; they were playing' - an event that looks like malicious destruction from one viewpoint can become something quite different through other eyes.The story is proleptic in structure - we know what has happened, we just don't know how - and I'd say the tension is internalised. It's the 'luminous republic' at the end and its dependence on democratic and unhierarchical organisation which reminded me of the tragedy of Animal Farm.Provocative, suggestive and begging to be unpacked and discussed, this is dense and intense with a huge amount of meaning packed into a scant 200 pages.

A beautifully crafted, multi-layered journey that will leave you thinking about more than just the 32 children.

One of the greatest books of the 21st century.