CANIJO

A cult novel that finally leaves the limits of Seville and will make you a fervent fan of Mansilla.

Canijo is an unmissable tale of "the junkie". A brutal drug story that tells us of clan wars, revenge, thieves, and criminals. Whilst it is story that is full of misery and miserable people, it is also a story of love and heartbreak, all in arduous collusion with the desperate search for the daily hit. But, above all, Runt is the tale of the disaster named heroin: the years of its arrival, its emergence, its devastating consequences, and the looming threat of AIDS. Mansilla dissects this era like no one else, combining gritty honesty and unexpected tenderness with an affection and deep understanding of the addict's unreason that can only be explained from one's own experience: he writes with a knowledge that extends to very defined coordinates. Seville, the eighties. In the hangover of the '82 World Cup, heroin walks into the lives of the Molina's (a gypsy family that has to leave the marginalised neighbourhood of Tres Mil Viviendas after a clan war) thanks to the violent Rafael el Gamba and the other dealers that scheme around the Pumarejo (or Espumarejo, as its inhabitants call it) area. The protagonist of Runt begins to flirt with heroin, an addiction that inevitably grows, leaving readers to feel the stark, anguishing and unbearable withdrawals, the struggle to get enough of the hard stuff for a hit, and the havoc that the drug causes among a good part of the generation that lived in these times. Fernando Mansilla (Barcelona, 1965-2019) settled in Seville in 1981 and gradually made a name for himself as a Sevillian underground artist. His poems have been published in the work Poemas para la no posteridad (Cangrejo Pistolero, 2019), and he has also published the anthologies Matar Cabrones (Barrett, 2019) and Mansilla Street View (Barrett, 2020). He is considered by many to be the Leonard Cohen of Seville, thanks to his unmistakable voice and extraordinary poetry. As a playwright, he has been nominated six times for the Premios Max for his play Libertino.