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Don Carlos and Giovanni

Thorvald Steen

Translated from the Norwegian by James Anderson

In the months of September and October 1833, a young Englishman known as Don Carlos Finds himself in Buenos Aires. There he meets a casual laborer, Giovanni Graciani, from Genoa, Italy. These two short penetrating novels recount Giovanni's abandonment of faith, the political upheavals and the bloody events of Argentine history, and Giovanni's encounter with the man he calls Don Carlos—who in reality is Charles Robert Darwin—on a voyage that will change forever the way man perceives his world. The Italian struggles with the contrary elements of his friend's behavior—Darwin is both highly religious and is on the verge of establishing a whole new world of scientificism. Together these works reveal a philosophical and almost metaphysical battle between scientific logic and blind faith.

Throughout the world where these two short fictions have been published, they have been highly acclaimed: France's La Monde described them as "remarkable and intense"; Denmark's Politikenwrote: "Thorvald Steen constructs like a new Cees Nooteboom, expressing himself on a lazy Sunday..."; Sweden's Nordvästra Skånes Tidnigar described the novels as works wherein "one is captivated and sucked into a landscape with colors that can be bright or odious, or clear, almost translucent." In the United States Kirkus Reviews called the first novel "a rich intellectual adventure"; and Argentina's Clarin named it "One of the year's most important books."