Fog is a fresh new translation of the Spanish writer Miguel de Unamuno’s Niebla, first published in 1914. An early example of modernism’s challenge to the conventions of nineteenth-century realist fiction, Fog shocked critics but delighted readers with its formal experimentation and existential themes. This revolutionary novel anticipates the work of Sartre, Borges, Pirandello, Nabokov, Calvino, and Vonnegut.
 
The novel’s central character, Augusto, is a pampered, aimless young man who falls in love with Eugenia, a woman he randomly spots on the street. Augusto’s absurd infatuation offers an irresistible target for the philosophical ruminations of Unamuno’s characters, including Eugenia’s guardian aunt and “theoretical anarchist” uncle, Augusto’s comical servants, and his best friend, Victor, an aspiring writer who introduces him to a new, groundbreaking type of fiction. In a desperate moment, Augusto consults his creator about his fate, arguing with Unamuno about what it means to be “real.” Even Augusto’s dog, Orfeo, offers his canine point of view, reflecting on the meaning of life and delivering his master’s funeral oration.

Fog is a comedy, a tragic love story, a work of metafiction, and a novel of ideas. After more than a century, Unamuno’s classic novel still moves us, makes us laugh, and invites us to question our assumptions about literature, relationships, and mortality.
 

MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO (1864–1936) was a novelist, essayist, playwright, philosopher, and poet and one of the intellectual leaders of Spain's renowned “Generation of ’98.”
 
ELENA BARCIA has translated more than one hundred films for Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Studios, Sony Pictures, Paramount Studios, The Weinstein Company, Deluxe Digital Labs, Universal Studios, and Twentieth-Century Fox. She has served as a translation consultant for Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Alfonso Cuarón, and others. 
 

"This nimbly constructed metanarrative features buoyant prose and surprising tenderness, leading the reader to unexpected places." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Unamuno’s Fog begins as a comedy of self-deception and role-playing, and ends by undermining the very notion of personal identity. With roots deep in Spanish culture (Cervantes above all), and anticipating a century of metafictions, from Borges to Perec, it is a triumphant demonstration of the novel as philosophical toy; rendered by Elena Barcia’s translation with all its lively humor intact.” —Geoffrey O’Brien, author of People on Sunday and The Guns and Flags Project

"An important, highly engaging predecessor to so much metafiction written today. Fog is very funny and ripe and primed for a whole new readership."  —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

"Few novels in modern literature have dared bare their philosophical investigations so brazenly. But in doing so Fog reminds us that the questions that haunted Unamuno more than a century past still dominate our discourse, our literature and our philosophy... Unamuno’s influence spans the twentieth century: writers from Heidegger to Borges have declared their debt to him. Radical trends, and radical thinkers, continue to draw sustenance from this great disruptor of world literature who stood between two epochs... Readers, and writers, must read Fog to discover how Unamuno helped cement this reality (to quote Gottfried Benn): 'there is no reality, only, at most, its distorted image.'" —Full Stop