THE SON OF MAN by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

Translated by Frank Wynne

There’s not much breathing space in this taut, almost unbearably tense follow-up to Del Amo’s breakthrough hit, Animalia. While The Son of Man might be a more slight affair than its epic predecessor, it is no less cataclysmic in its near biblical force. Here Del Amo eschews names to tell the story of a young boy who is surprised by the sudden reappearance of a man he barely knows - his father, who has spent the last six years in jail.

From the outset, the father is a sinister presence. Hell bent on stapling his family back together, he all but kidnaps mother and child, and takes them to an abandoned shack in the forest. It is, we learn, his own childhood home, where he was left to the devices of his abusive, paranoid dad. There are serious Cormac McCarthy meets Misery-era Stephen King vibes in the simmering relationships. It doesn’t help that the mother is pregnant with the father’s best buddy’s child. The fear is palpable, the tragedy inevitable.

The Son of Man is a small masterpiece of toxic masculinity and the ways in which male violence is passed between generations. Skin crawling but essential reading.

The Son of Man by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo (Tr. Frank Wynne)
Text Publishing, 2024
200 pages