Nov 18 - Jonathan Gallardo – A New Novel By Gibraltarian Author M. G. Sanchez
Gibraltarian author M. G. Sanchez has just brought out a new novel entitled Jonathan Gallardo. Running to 320 pages, it follows the fortunes of a local orphan who, after being beaten up in a street fight, starts to hear voices in different isolated locations around the Rock. This is the second novel that M. G. Sanchez has published this year, having already brought out his darkly comic novel Solitude House in January.
Earlier this year Dr Sanchez was also invited to the University of Turin, where he was quizzed by Italian academics about his books and on the subject of Gibraltarian identity. The visit was organised by Professor Esterino Adami, a specialist in postcolonial literature and ‘World Englishes’ who has written various articles about Sanchez’s work.
Dr Sanchez was also one of the three main guests in a recent edition of Late Night Live, an Australian radio programme hosted by Phillip Adams, one of Australia’s most senior and famous broadcasters. During the course of a fifteen-minute interview Sanchez spoke extensively about Gibraltarian politics and culture.
Both Solitude House and Jonathan Gallardo are available in paperback and kindle form on Amazon. Below we reproduce the publisher’s blub from each book. More information about Dr Sanchez’s books – as well as his other activities – can be found on his facebook page (www.facebook.com/mgsanchezwriter) and his personal website (www.mgsanchez.net).
Solitude House
Meet Dr John Seracino, predatory ladies man and born misanthrope. All he wants in life is a property free of any annoying neighbours. But Seracino has a problem: he resides in Gibraltar, where almost everybody lives in flats and where detached properties come at a premium. For the last few years he has been attending property auctions in the hope of bagging himself one of the old colonial bungalows that intermittently come up for sale. So far, though, he keeps on getting outbid by lawyers and bankers, men for whom the annual £90,000 that Seracino earns as a GP are no more than small change. Then one day Seracino’s luck changes and he manages to land himself an old colonial property in the Upper Rock area, the aptly named Solitude House. For the first couple of weeks the misanthropic doctor sits every evening on his newly refurbished veranda, looking out over the Bay of Gibraltar with a glass of his favourite alcoholic tipple. But events are about to take an unexpectedly nasty and frightening turn....
In this wickedly irreverent novel, Gibraltarian author M. G. Sanchez explores the idea of self-imposed solitude in a narrative tinged with supernatural and psychological elements, as well as the Gibraltarian themes that have traditionally underpinned his writing.
Jonathan Gallardo
Jonathan has been an orphan since the age of three. He is an unusual kid — quiet and self-absorbed in some ways, but violent and ill-tempered in others. One day he slips halfway through a street fight and is repeatedly kicked in the head. From this time on he is beset by the strangest of conditions: he can hear voices near places where crimes and misdeeds have been committed in the historical past.... Jonathan Gallardo, M. G. Sanchez’s third novel, is one of those books that defy generic classification. On one level it is the story of a working-class Gibraltarian kid striving to improve his lot in life ... but at the same time it is an exploration of Gibraltar's largely forgotten colonial history – or what the narrator of the novel at one point describes as ‘an unrecorded history of division and conflict that wasn't supposed to exist but which nonetheless oozes like spectral mould out of Gibraltar’s crumbling ancient walls.’
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