Ex Libris: Ignacio Padilla's Shadow Without A Name

I've always been fascinated with chess.

The small wooden or ivory pieces. The black-and-white squares lined up and stretching finitely before the players. The idea that all moves can be predicted if one were to think through the possibilities rationally and logically.

Unfortunately, I'm a lousy player, not being able to think more than two moves down the line. This was made more evident for me especially after reading Ignacio Padilla's Shadow Without A Name and its almost-labyrinthine storyline.

Unpredictable, like a bridge falling down from under you. And when it does become predictable, the escape from the Minotaur's lair becomes a thrilling ride.

An adept chess player, my father used to say whenever he explained a masterly move to me, recognizes immediately, even in the strangest circumstances, those who are his peers. However, he embarks on a game only when he is sure he has measured his opponent's strengths, and never-- absolutely never-- will he wager on the outcome anything less than his own life.

The above passage is one of the core ideas that Padilla's story revolves around. Switch 'chess' and 'game' with the word 'Life' (yes, with a capital L) and this becomes more apt, playing as it does with questions of identity and history: who we are is inextricably linked to what we do.

The story opens on a chess match between two men on a train heading to the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s disastrous Eastern Front. The stakes are high: the winner will take the identity of a railway signalman and live out the war in safety. The loser will go to certain death as more meat in the butcher's grinder that is World War I.

But this is not the first chess match to use identities as bets nor is this the last time.

Several years later, in the wake of World War II, Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann, master chess player and engineer of the 'Final Solution' (that sent thousands of Jews to their deaths), is captured in Buenos Aires, sentenced in Israel and executed. But was that really Eichmann or someone else?

Like an onion, Padilla's novel reveals that not everything is what it seems. Readers' assumption about the identities of characters are turned on their ear, making the narrator (there are several) an unreliable witness to the events in the story. Like a chess match itself, the reading of Padilla's book becomes a challenge itself as the reader tries to match wits with the author. Where are you taking this?, one is ultimately led to asked as another revelation trips up the reader.

Moreover, this book hinges on another fascination of mine: a 'secret history' that could have possibly happened to real-life characters (though without the fantastical aspects). Aside from Eichmann, another real-life character in the novel was General Thadeus Dreyer, architect of the 'Amphitryon' project that was supposed to create doubles of high-ranking Nazi officers. When the Amphitryon Project falls out of favor, Dreyer and the doubles disappear leading to the question: What happened to them?

Despite questions about motivations and plotting, Padilla has written an intriguing, complex and sophisticated book that grips you by the neck and doesn't let go reminiscent of suspense writers like John le Carre. Likewise, his language is simple yet elegant, no missteps in the telling of the story. And sometimes exquisitely brutal like the harrowing scenes of World War I.

Of course, once the ride's over you'll start noticing little details that may bug you about the story. But in the meantime, this is definitely something to read while drinking hot chocolate on a cold, rainy night.

(As I mentioned in a post before, Padilla is one of the up-and-coming writers of Mexico. Translated into English by Anne McClean and Peter Bush, Shadow without a Name was previously published in Spain in its original language as Amphitryon.)