The Requisitions
Novel by Samuél Lopez-Barrantes
In this historical metafiction set in Nazi-occupied Poland, a present-day narrator trying to make sense of his past recounts the story of Viktor, a disillusioned academic forced into the Łódź Ghetto, Elsa, a captive Gestapo secretary, and her estranged fiancé, Carl, a troubled policeman whose fixation with the past is pushing him towards unspeakable cruelty.
Inspired by Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, Laurent Binet's HhHH, and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, The Requisitions is a historical metafiction about history, memory, and what we choose to remember, a page-turning novel about remaining human during inhumane times.
ISBN: 9798989580309
“Vivid in a way that is almost tangible … In spite of its grim subject matter, The Requisitions is a strangely and luminously hopeful novel.” —Author Raina Lipsitz’s review in The Metropolitan Review
“This page-turning book is a must-read for all those who value the work of a master storyteller in command of his material.” —David A. Andelman, journalist/author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today
“Vibrant, shadowed, compelling, and ultimately symphonic, The Requisitions offers the gift of love in an impossible situation.”
—Nor Hall, author of Those Women and The Moon and the Virgin
“Original, deftly crafted, memorable, and with a distinctive storytelling style … an impressive level of literary excellence from start to finish that will linger in the mind of the reader longer after the book has been finished and set back upon the shelf.”
—James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, The Midwest Book Review
SAMUÉL LOPEZ-BARRANTES is a writer and musician. He lives in Paris, where he leads historical walks on modernism, existentialism, and the Nazi Occupation. His debut novel, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015) was the flagship novel for one of the USA’s first crowdfunded publishers. He named his indie rock band, Slim & The Beast, after his debut novel. After buying back his rights in 2022, he published a definitive Slim and The Beast: 10th Anniversary Edition with Kingdom Anywhere. Samuél is an active writer on Substack, where he was a member of the 2022 Substack Grow writers program. Find out more ifnotparis.substack.com