“Music flows through the writer’s new novel—published by Eterna Cadencia—from start to finish as it dives into the relationships of a musician who carries the weight of his father on his shoulders: a dark man who did business with the government during the last military dictatorship. Aside from the mandate to become a musician, the protagonist of Una música inherits from his father a small lot in the countryside and is forced to rebuild his life from that ruinous margin, a theme that the author masterfully deals with through both the language and the plot.”

“In his new novel Una música, the prize-wining Argentine novelist returns with a gripping story in which a musician has to deal with his father’s legacy, an inheritance that goes beyond the mere physical. After the success of his previous books, the author confirms himself as one of the strongest voices of Argentine literature.”

“Hernan Ronsino’s literary work is composed of novels that have memorable characters and scenarios. However, what fundamentally defines his storytelling is a tone. This is what we could call his style: sober language, elegant syntax, and a melancholic Pampa feel that set his stories apart.”

“There is music in Una música, and there is also the sound of a factory, the rumble of train traffic, the buzzing of motorcycles in the suburbs, the sound of birds and overwhelmed nature. There are doubles, too—people and scenes that multiply and recompose themselves.

With prose that sparkles and shifts between perceptive description and sober syntax, whole universes open up right where there seems to be something on the margins—universes filled with ‘minor plots,’ as the protagonist of Una música himself says. But it’s precisely there, in the things that surround the main plot, the things that peek through like mere borders, that a charming literature appears with all its strength.”

“Una música starts with a legacy: Juan Sebastián Lebonté, a renowned musician, receives a small lot in Paso del Rey as inheritance after his father’s death. When he arrives, he finds a place that has been occupied for decades. A poor field, overrun with weeds, crowned by a bridge, crossed by the train from Once and that thing that is so present in Ronsino’s literature: the factory. In order to survive in the community that hosts him, Lebonté has to change his name, learn how to be a construction worker and a carpenter, and enter into a different system. “I don’t know why I do it,’ he says, ‘but I persist willingly.’ With time, the character of the father becomes more complex: his obsession with a musician (Bill Turner) and a CD (Hudson) and the pressure he exerted on his son for years so that he would play the piano. The novel also settles itself in the tension between art and nature: the protagonist begins to immerse himself in his feelings, in the impressions that the landscape makes on him while he remembers concerts and lessons […] And yet, whoever ventures into Una música will find some kind of optimism […] They will also find the prose of one of the most celebrated Argentine writers of today; one who, paradoxically, is going against trends.”

“Ronsino returns to the themes that have interested him from the beginning of his literary career: the sounds that leap from a text, the tone and cadence of prose, and the sociological side of his plots; the role of large industries on communities, the concept of progress, family and tribal bonds […] Hernán Ronsino is one of the most original and powerful voices of contemporary Argentine literature…his literary merits are even more notable when they manifest outside of trendy literature, surpassing it or trying to escape upstream, imposing an upside down style and literary proposal.”

“A captivating novel with a powerful, subtle, and precise narrative.”

“Ronsino, born in 1975, is one of the best writers under 50 in Argentina with his solid, coherent work. The fantasy that is generated throughout Una música makes you think that this novel, which can be placed next to Antonio Di Benedetto’s Zama, will grow with every new reading and review.”

“After four years, Ronsino returns with a novel that was as awaited as it is gripping, one that follows the footsteps and wanderings of a pianist who has inherited much more than material goods from his father.”

“Reading Una música is a must—besides, those who understand that escape, in literature, is the search for a different way to say something in addition to the search for a different destination.”