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Book Summary and Reviews of Lost Luggage by Jordi Punti

Lost Luggage by Jordi Punti

Lost Luggage

by Jordi Punti

  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • Readers' Rating (17):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2013, 448 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The prize-winning debut novel from a major new talent in Catalan literature - the story of four half-brothers who only discover the others' existence when the father who abandoned them all is reported missing.

Christof, Christophe, Christopher, and Cristòfol are four brothers - sons of the same father and four very different mothers, yet none of them knows about the existence of the others. They live in Frankfurt, Paris, London, and Barcelona and they unwittingly share the fact that their father, Gabriel Delacruz - a truck driver - abandoned them when they were little and they never heard from him again.

Then one day, Cristòfol is contacted by the police: his father is officially a missing person. This fact leads him to discover that he has three half-brothers, and the four young men come together for the first time. Two decades have passed since their father last saw any of them. They barely remember what he was like, but they decide to look for him to resolve their doubts. Why did he abandon them? Why do all four have the same name? Did he intend for them to meet?

Divided by geography yet united by blood, the "Cristobales" set out on a quest that is at once painful, hilarious, and extraordinary. They discover a man who during thirty years of driving was able to escape the darkness of Franco's Spain and to explore a luminous Europe, a journey that, with the birth of his sons, both opened and broke his heart.

Paperback Original

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Punti delivers a richly told literary novel about four half brothers in search of their father… The characters' wit and the author's vivid imagination shine through in this beautiful translation from Catalan." - Kirkus

"The spark of magical realism enlivens Punti's debut novel about four abandoned sons... [A] successful experiment in perspective, made lively by Punti's extensive knowledge of the landscapes of Europe." - Publishers Weekly "Inventive, absorbing and beautifully written." - The Daily Mail

"A remarkable work of literary fiction that also manages to be unputdownable." - London Review of Books

"A funny, moving and poignant exploration of identity, home, family and freedom." - The Daily Express

"Lost Luggage is an astonishing literary artifact. Marvellous." - El Mundo

"A conjuring trick. Incomparable literature." - El País

"A book as extraordinary as it is memorable. Jordi Puntí already belongs to the noble tradition of the great storytellers." - Rock de Lux

"A novel with an uncommon brilliance, confirming Puntí's talent." - El Cultural

"Characters with great literary force; they represent the power of fiction when facing history." - Culturas de La Vanguardia

"Pure life, intense and passionate. A thorough and precise creation, very near perfection… one can only surrender to the utter force of the story." - Qué Leer

This information about Lost Luggage was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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