“Tócalo otra vez, Santiago.” Mass Culture, Memory, and Identity in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s El invierno en Lisboa

Antonio Muñoz Molina’s El invierno en Lisboa (1987) recounts the tale of Santiago Biralbo, a jazz pianist that is hunted by Malcolm, a counterfeit art-dealer. Malcolm believes that the musician will help him locate his lover Lucrecia, who had tricked him and his crony Toussants Morton out of a Cézanne masterpiece that they had planned on selling. The pianist becomes involuntarily involved in a circle of intrigue and deception that reaches its climax when he kills Malcolm in self defense, runs from the authorities and changes his identity in order to avoid going to jail. At the end of the novel, just when Biralbo appears to have escaped the troubled events of his past, Morton reappears in the his hotel room, still following the pianist and hunting Lucrecia. The novel closes with Biralbo’s renewed disappearance as his persecution continues with no suggestion of future resolution.