One of the best things about owning a lot of books you haven’t read yet, is you get to go shopping on your own bookshelf when it’s time to read a new book. Sometimes I have a rough reading plan laid out for myself, other times I may simply just walk up to my shelf and browse until something catches my eye.
Recently, my podcast co-host Andy was placing an order from Deep Vellum a small shop/publisher in Texas, who according to their website, is the largest publisher of literature in Translation in the US! I had never read any of Deep Vellum’s titles before, but perusing their website one title caught my eye: The Anarchist Who Shared my Name. After reading the synopsis, about a young man who finds out that a political agitator and participant in a government coup has the same name as himself, he goes on a mission to find out exactly who the former Pablo Martin Sanchez really was, and from there gives the reader a historical but fictional retelling of the man’s life.
Why I Bought It
As a lover of both political strife and historical fiction, this work looked right up my alley, and I also wanted a modern work to check off from Spain in my goal of reading one book from every country in the world.
When the book arrived, I was surprised by its size. Not only is it nearly 600 pages, but the book is quite tall, meaning that it would likely be closer to a thousand page read if it were in a more mass market paperback style of printing.
Being unfamiliar with the types of work Deep Vellum publishing, but knowing that my co-host Andy is a lover of publications that put out dense literature, I put the book aside for the time being.
Why I Read It
Gearing up for 2024, I started to think about some of my reading goals, and I like to start each year with a fairly challenging read. I’m not sure why, but it just feels good to take on a big book right away at the start of the year, and I saw The Anarchist Who Shared my Name sitting on my shelf, staring at me, so I grabbed it.
Immediately from the preface, I was hooked. Even the short story that Pablo Martin Sanchez tells before the book even begins was intriguing, discussing how he came across the information that there was even a known anarchist with his name, and how he eventually tracked down the man’s niece, who, miraculously was still alive to fill him in on the turn of the century politics and how the original Pablo Martin Sanchez was involved in an attempt to overthrow the corrupt Spanish government. Wild stuff!
It all began the day I googled my name for the first time. Back then, I was a young, unpublished author who blamed his failure on the ordinariness of his name.
First, I would like to point out that despite Andy’s penchant for adoring publishers who’s titles require equal parts effort and stamina to enjoy, The Anarchist who Shared my Name was a very easy read. In fact Sanchez’s storytelling felt seamless and the book is chalked full of approachable humor.
But make no mistake, this is still a work of serious literature, in my opinion. One of the unique characteristics of The Anarchist who Shared my Name is the dual narrative structure and timeline. The book bounces back and forth between two timelines that are both moving forward in a linear direction. One is in “real time” of Pablo’s (the original Pablo) life, the other is of his childhood.
As the story moves forward the timelines begin to somewhat converge one another, as the childhood timeline moves much quicker than the “modern” narrative.
At this point, you may be wondering…what the heck is anarchism anyway? If you’re an American that hasn’t studied much political or economic philosophy, you might think anarchists are crazy people who simply want chaos. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth.
The term anarchy is made up of the Greek words of “an” meaning “without” and archy stemming from “arkhos” meaning chief or ruler. In other words, anarchy is a political system that does not utilize a single centralized ruler, but instead the power structure is divided and organized amongst the people of a society.
Sound familiar? Classical anarchism is the cousin of socialism and communism.
During the turn of the 20th century, Spain was in constant political turmoil, with several shifts in power, leaders, as well as many political assignations, coups and attempted coups. This is the world that our protagonist Pablo Martin Sanchez lives in.
In the beginning I was thoroughly enjoying The Anarchist who Shared my Name. I loved the pacing, the juxtaposition of the two timelines, the humor…But around the 450 page mark, the story felt like it had peaked. The story is similar to the movie Titanic, in the sense that, although you may not know specific details going in to the book, you more or less have a sense of how things end.
Looking at nearly 150 pages to go, I was confused. I felt like we had arrived a terminal point much too early in the page count, and I couldn’t imagine what would be left to say in the next 150 pages. The story up until that point always had a great feeling of inertia, that all of this was building to something monumental and final, and 75% of the book completed, it felt like we were there.
I’ve never been bashful about putting a book down that I’m not enjoying, regardless of how far into it I may be, and as I had to force myself to close in on 500 pages, the thought had crossed my mind. “But how could this be?” I thought to myself. The beginning of the book was so good. However, just past the 500 page mark, a roughly 50-75 page lull ended, and the story came rushing to an unexpected conclusion, due in part to a post script added after the final edit had been given the green light prior to publication.
You see, Pablo Martin Sanchez (the new one), was writing a story of a man’s life, based on information he had dug up from the past, and when you start digging up skeletons, you’ll often stir up ghosts, and that is exactly what happened. It’s hard to construct a narrative based on 100 year old information, but Sanchez does an excellent job of crafting this unbelievable story, and couldn’t ignore when one of those old ghosts paid him a visit that added a new twist to the story’s conclusion.
Ultimately, I loved The Anarchist who Shared my Name, and truly if it weren’t for what felt like a premature peak, it would have been an absolute no brainer true 5 star of a read, but I walk away from it leaving it with 4.5, but absolutely no hesitancy in recommending it to lovers of historical fiction, works in translation, or books that help give you a better understanding of a complex topic like political or economic theories inside an entertaining and narrative structure.