(2) Exemplary crimes

By Max Aub

Dear readers, this is the second installation of my translation of Max Aub’s Exemplary Crimes.

Max Aub (1903 – 1972) was a Mexican-Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright, poet, and literary critic who authored nearly 100 books and plays. While very famous and greatly respected in Spain, he is still criminally little-known in other countries. In English, in particular, the only available work is Field of Honor (1943), the first volume of a six-novel cycle devoted to the Spanish civil War known as The Magic Labyrinth (1943-1968).

I’m lucky enough to own the Italian translation of a small book called Crímenes ejemplares that was first published in 1957. It is a compilation of “confessions” in which a different person describes a crime s/he has committed and tells us why.

I have translated them for you into English (please forgive the mistakes) and I’m going to post them here, more or less one a day (or more than one in case they are very short). I hope you like black humor. Enjoy.

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It is so simple: God is creation, in every instant He is what is born, what lives and also what dies. God is life, what goes on, energy and also death, which is strength, duration and continuity. What Christians are these who doubt the word of their God?