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Prologue

I

For some reason I keep buying books. It`s a compulsive thing.

Two hundred and fifty two books that hasn´t been read.

I live in a one bedroom apartment, the dormitory and the living room are not small. The living it`s clean and neat, even smells good. My room smells at old paper, sweat, and instant noodles. There are some books out of my room (The hardcovers ones that are of the same collections and that has colors that match), but almost everything it`s inside the room: in the desk, in the closet, in the floor.

My first acquisition: Twelve wanderer stories, wrote by G.W. Duke. (I was eleven years old)

My last acquisition arrived this afternoon: The book of sand, wrote by Noe Nagar, translated by E Renzi.

I inherited the last from a friend, Professor Lawry. I meet him in college, he was already old at that time —seventy something I think—. We knew each other because in those years I used to go to all the classes, and workshops, and everything that has something to do with literature, and one day I went to his class. He was talking about the romantics: Alfred De Musset, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Pomb... Was a funny day, an old guy reading poems in from of fifty students —everybody checking their phones—. He needed help with the computer. I ended helping him, and when the class ended we talk a little. He was a quirky guy: small, skinny with a cockeye and very funny. He was also homosexual, but I learned that a year later when Melissa told me. I was surprised, I always notice that he was very kind, I mean almost too much, but he never try anything. Anyway, one time he told me that he find this book, a treasure he said. He bought it at the "Rendón Bookshop" at downtown. It was called The book of sand, it was a novel —he said novel but he really didn´t knew what it was, he only knew it was fiction—. “It´s seems the kind of book that it´s described in Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, it is the encyclopedia of one cosmos, a book that has inside many books —all the books—, it`s a bible, it`s a grimoire, it`s a monstrous thing” he said that time with a serious overdramatic face just to let out a laugh two seconds later.

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The old Lawry died last week, he didn't leave much: a few books that he wrote, an apartment and a restaurant that he bought and left to his nephews. That and a collection of books that he gave to the university and a few friends.

This afternoon the book came to my door, I have not read it yet.

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