Carlos Rojas Vila

The Garden of Janus is a mythical and magical journey into the depths of Cervantes's soul through dreams, memories, and enigmas. It is a narrative of a narrative, as the reader sees Cervantes's avatars transformed into the story of Don Quixote. The title refers to a mysterious garden in the land of Atocha, in old Madrid where Cervantes, as a child, would go for strolls with his younger brothers and sisters. The children stumbled upon this orchard, where they saw the statue of the double-faced Roman deity Janus, father of the Olympus. Half a century later, and in the same enchanted garden, Cervantes encountered the ghosts of his own fictional characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. The troubled ghosts, eager to confront their creator, informed Cervantes that while he was delaying the writing of their adventures, an impostor was writing a continuation of their story, leading them through the nightmare of a fake existence. From this point on, the novel aims to unravel a double mystery, both human and literary: What made Cervantes wait ten years to write the second part of his acclaimed novel, and who was Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda, the plagiarist who dared to write a sequel for Cervantes's novel? Rojas ponders whether the impostor, whoever he was, intended to destroy Cervantes, thus keeping him from writing his second part, or on the contrary, intended to provoke him into writing it. Was he acting alone or was he trying to protect someone else's identity? Rojas uses historical evidence and his own interpretation to create a novel of intrigue and mystery. He weaves his plot like a detective through intricate and surprising revelations about Cervantes and his contemporaries, Lope and Gongora, as he tries to unmask Avellaneda.

"Rojas re-creates the nineteenth-century corridors of power and portrays the relationship between Goya and King Fernando VII, a despot bent on establishing a cruel regime after Spain's War of Independence. Goya obliges the king's request for a portrait, but his depiction not only fails to flatter but reflects a terrible darkness and grotesqueness. More than a century later, transcending conventional time, Goya observes Franco's body lying in state and experiences again a dark and monstrous despair."--