Diary of a Humiliated Man [Paperback]

Felix de Azua (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 157129029X | ISBN-13: 978-1571290298 | Publication Date: October 25, 1996 | Edition: 1st

Diary of a Humiliated Man presents 8 months in the life of a hopelessly banal individual-told in the form of notebook entries.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mordantly funny, at times horrifying, always invigorating, the first novel of this Spanish writer to appear in English benefits from a supple translation by Jones. Through eight months of dense diary entries, it recounts the distractions of an apparently mediocre man in post-Franco Barcelona who embraces banality and drifts on the tide of the city. But the diarist's piercing irony keeps his descent a sharply told, energetically written tour that sometimes resembles a Baedeker of the underworld as edited by James Joyce. Orphaned and living on a small inheritance, the narrator finds himself drifting to the sleazy night life of the Ramblas, where he encounters former mentors and eventually adopts a new one: an enigmatic usurer known as the Chinaman. Their relationship moves from adversarial to oddly co-dependent, as the diarist experiments with crime, slides into squalor and madness, is rescued by a jailhouse vision of materialism and an apotheosis of sex, has a final reckoning with his alter ego and ends up reconciled with his voice?the diary itself. This modern picaresque is a bracing change from the sometimes banal freeways of current American fiction.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In de Azua's first novel available in English, a man "with pretensions to banality" spends his time reading, wandering the streets of Barcelona, drinking, thinking, having aimless sexual and underworld encounters, and recording his observations in a diary. Thankfully, because many readers would probably be happy to trade lives with him, the narrator does not descend into self-pity. Recalling Camus's The Fall (1956) and many works by Nabokov that have an erudite first-person narrator, the book resembles many other novels about superfluous antiheroes. Its narrator, however, is unpretentious, witty without being stagy, and tenderly satiric. Another plus are the well-translated, insightful descriptions of Barcelona and its society. This book was winner of Spain's Premio Herralde Prize in 1987. Recommended for informed readers.?Eric Howard, Pasadena, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Brookline Books/Lumen Editions; 1st edition (October 25, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157129029X
• ISBN-13: 978-1571290298
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,031,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Looking for something different? Buy this., June 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Diary of a Humiliated Man (Paperback)

This book promises a refreshing change from the often banal offerings of American literature. It delivers. It is a peculiar little book--and one of the best I've read in a while. It reveals itself quite slowly, but besides being a modest little book and full of hope, it is a well written and clever examination the quest for meaning in modern life. Stylistically, I would place it with Sartre's "Nausea", Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground," and Hamsun's "Hunger". Philosophically, the story is more optimisitic and more modern. If you enjoyed those, give this book a try.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars not banal, not banana, July 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Diary of a Humiliated Man (Paperback)

The narrator of this fine book attempts banality, but comes nowhere close to it. The writing is original and fresh. The dialogue is handled very well indeed, and it is a cosmopolitan voice (oh, yes!) that speaks to us from these pages. And a voice that finally manages to escape the confines of literature and present itself as pure and unfettered. The book is funny too, in parts. And did I mention the dialogue--it is really well written. Heck, I enjoyed this book a ton.

1.0 out of 5 stars A Banal, Not Humiliated Man, July 9, 2010

By 

George K Prometheus - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Diary of a Humiliated Man (Paperback)

An allegedly picaresque novel, Diary of a Humiliated Man by Felix de Azua, has been sitting next to the computer for weeks. It took a similar number of weeks to plow through after getting off to a promising start. Written in Spanish in 1987 and translated into English in 1996, the book is impossible to find. I guess there isn't any demand.

de Azua calls the first part "A Banal Man" and the second "The Dangers of Banality" so where the "hero" gets humiliated must have been lost in translation. After five months of diary entries, the hero explains who is trying to debase him -- his "employer" the Chinaman: "It us very clear that the Chinaman feels a visceral antipathy toward my banality and that he wants to teach me a lesson. With that idea in mind, he keeps me under control, tries to humiliate me. But his teaching method is corrupt. He doesn't even use fear, just disgust." But upon reflection, I conclude that only those whom we love and admire can humiliate us; we expect some social reciprocity. If we ignore or look down on someone, their attempts to diminish us has no effect as we do not adhere to their measure of man but our own. The story's protagonist has no love of himself, let alone this criminal associate.

de Azua maybe is modeling this man's life on Kafka. (Since I haven't read Metamorphisis, I don't know whether it is better to be an insect or banal.) How can one have banality as a quest goal? What insights there are on contemporary Spanish governmental corruption is gratuitous when the protagonist chooses not to interact with his community.