Send Down Einstein

A comic and melancholy novel about translation and living between cultures, set during one historic day in Spain: February 21, 1981, the attempted coup against the newborn Spanish democracy.

Early one morning in 1981, Peter Carp, an American poet and translator living in Granada, wakes to the sounds of shouting and the revving of a motorcycle. These interruptions to Peter’s sleep provoke a series of interrelated thoughts, delivered with wry humor, about personal relations in Spain, gossip, the role of women in a patriarchal society, and the after-effects of expelling the Jewish population from Spain in 1492. We are introduced to Peter’s associative view of the world as he draws on a lifetime of reading poetry, of making sense of his own Jewish sensibility, and how it relates to the cultural history of the Spain he has come to love for its music, people, food, and language. 

Peter lives in the home of Alberto, a professor of translation, who was once jailed under Franco’s regime. He has fallen in love with Ana, a young woman who is exploring the new freedoms of post-Franco Spain. Years ago, he had befriended flamenco singers of the Roma community, and his current task is to translate the flamenco lyrics he has collected, a process that challenges his understanding of Spanish and the capacity of language to convey meaning. His day brings him into contact with a wide range of Spaniards, including a gardener at the Alhambra, a group of children playing in the street, a professional beggar, a diverse range of personalities at a neighborhood bar before the midday dinner, and in the evening, a small band of fascist sympathizers encouraged by the attempted coup now taking place in the Spanish parliament.

With prose that mixes social observation, linguistic conjecture, and vivid description, Paul Hecht examines how living is itself a form of translation when moving from one language or culture to another, and how history can erupt into our own world. In Send Down Einstein, Hecht creates a tension between what we dream will happen and what actually does happen. In this bouillabaisse of emotion, the reader will taste how, for Peter Carp—with the right food and the best company—dreams, hope, and words can matter.

Contributor: Charles Oberndorf (Introduction by), Anthony Geist (Afterword by)

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