The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

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The comic and the tragic of life multiplies exponentially in certain types of works that represent who we are in the form of allegories or fables, such as time travel or obsessive repetitions.

The Truman Show, Stuck In Time, Benjamin Button, Even Big Fish…, All these films establish an alienating argument at times, bizarre in its fantasy, comic in its delirium, melancholic in its background and even existentialist in its meaning at times. All because deep down we are told about our LIFE, like this with capital letters.

And it is that only fantasy is able to show us the transience of what we are with a strangely full sensation, emotional and at the same time forceful. Because in the end, when we get ready to breathe for the last time, with the last puff of the fish out of the water, we will only be what we imagine while the light sweeps our pupils from within.

In this book we embark on the adventure of LIFE from that comic part that we love to revisit to put aside tragic notions right off the bat. And it is that Harry August is on his deathbed. Again.

Every time Harry dies, he is reborn in the exact same place and on the same date, as a child with all the knowledge of a life that he has already lived twelve times before. No matter what he does or what decisions he makes, when Harry dies he always goes back to where it all began. Up to now.

As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl approaches the edge of his bed. "I almost missed you, Dr. August," he says. I need to send a message to the past with you. It has been passed from child to adult, from child to adult, a thousand years back in time. The message is that the world is ending and we cannot prevent it. Now it's your turn".

This is the story of what Harry August does next (and what he did before). How he tries to save a past that he cannot change and a future that he cannot allow. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, of love and loneliness, of loyalty and redemption and the inevitable passage of time.

You can now buy the book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North, here:

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