The reader may sense, due to the strength of its premise, the kind of novel they are about to dive into. And indeed, Los alemanes centers on the descendants of the Germans who lived in the Cameroon colony. In 1916, after yielding to the Allied forces, they turned themselves over to the Spanish authorities in Guinea and eventually settled in several places, including Zaragoza. But more than that, Sergio del Molino, born in Madrid in 1979, offers a text that is deeply crafted around questions of identity, the burden and embellishment of the past, class divisions, and the inheritance of ancestral sins. This is built with the material that shapes much of contemporary narrative fiction: family conflict.
The novel follows the once wealthy Schuster family right after the sudden death of one of the three brothers, Gabi, who had been a global punk icon. While the focus is on the two surviving siblings, Fede, a quiet and unambitious professor at the University of Regensburg, and Eva, a successful municipal politician poised to take on bigger responsibilities, there are two other protagonists who exist in absentia: the father, Juan Schuster, now speechless and nearly vegetative, and Gabi himself, who, through references, provides the wry, provocative, and humorous counterpoint.
The work is narrated in the first person, yet every chapter unfolds from the perspective of a different character. With deft storytelling, Del Molino weaves description, inner monologue, action, and dialogue into a seamless flow. Because the past plays a central role in the book, the author manages to introduce it very organically—sometimes nostalgic, sometimes tormented—in a way that sharpens the portrayal of both the characters and the wider community. It also intensifies the question of identity (being German and Spanish, and not fully belonging to either side) with the author peppering the characters’ thoughts with numerous German expressions and references. At first these phrases may feel unfamiliar to readers, but they gradually come to feel essential to the characters’ nature.
Although the dialogues are frequently brilliant, they are dense with cultural conversation, literature, history, and philosophy, it is music that dominates the book’s many references. This abundance of musical discussion appears less as a defining trait of the characters’ idiosyncrasies and more as a symptom of their own communicative difficulty. This is especially true of a character like the mother, now deceased, who comes across as languid and timid yet would soar in ecstasies at concerts and who was a true devotee of German Romanticism.
While the novel grips from its first hundred pages, plunging readers into the community’s inward-focused atmosphere and the tangled family dynamics, the suspense around the emergence of two shady figures who threaten to reveal long-buried secrets unless a new football stadium project is approved escalates the tension. From that point, the pace and intensity heighten, though specifics must remain unspoken to preserve the reader’s experience.
Los alemanes, winner of the Alfaguara Prize, makes it clear that awards are not reserved for books that simply please the palate of readers. This is Del Molino’s most daring, and perhaps best, novel. Readers close the book still savoring the sharp, almost Sorkin-like dialogue, while feeling affection for the characters who are prickly yet deeply humane.