“Now she’s here, on this balcony: ‘It was the flowering season of the year.’ Buenos Aires in September. Everything is repeated and out of place at the same time.” – Clara Obligado

The book begins with a spiral conch shell, the middle of the ring expanding outward through the stories. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “I live my life in widening rings / Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen...”

We travel through Poland, Madrid, Italy, Albania, the Arctic Circle, Mauthausen, Normandy—always circling back to Buenos Aires, the central stage of this great play. Each little story—of a baker, a whistle man at a train station, a photographer—becomes entwined with others, shaping a larger narrative. Every short story is a drop of water in the river, sending out ripples that widen into this collection. The baker we meet in Buenos Aires reappears later through his grandson somewhere else, continuing the chain.

“Two Spanish grandparents, two Polish grandparents, and I was born in Buenos Aires: I’m a genetic accident.”

The architecture of the book seems sporadic, yet it is built with the finest detail. Some of my favourite picturesque descriptions: a red-haired girl stretching out her hand from a moving train in farewell; a red balloon drifting upward past a balcony.

This book explores exile, migration, identity, future, guilt, regret, death, and betrayal—with a light, melancholy touch, like a street accordionist playing Piazzolla’s tango. I passed by accidentally, caught for a moment, and carried away by the sad tune.

Thanks to Columbia University Press, Sundial House, and NetGalley for the eARC of The Book of Mistaken Journeys by Clara Obligado, translated by Molly Wagschal.