A Galician novel of rare eloquence

All is Silence by Manuel Rivas. Harvill Secker, €21.40. Reviewed by Joanne Hayden.

Manuel Rivas has crafted both a gangster story and a meditation on different kinds of silence. Photo: Santos Diez

All is Silence by Manuel Rivas

Harvill Secker, €21.40

Reviewed by Joanne Hayden

.....

The crime boss in All is Silence wears a white panama hat. He first appears in a tumbledown school known locally as the School of Indians. He loves Westerns and thinks there's no one like John Wayne.

Later, as an older but equally fearsome adversary, he ponders the flipside of technological advances: "The phone had destroyed the cowboy's way ...