Review: Lunas и Moons: A multilingual voyage (2024) by Iván Brave

Iván Brave is a Houston-based author, poet, and scholar with several publications up his sleeve, ranging from fiction to essays and translations to poetry. Brave’s novels include The Summer Abroad (2018) and They Lived They Were at Brighton Beach (2020). However, my first encounter with Brave’s work was Awake & Asleep (2023), a novel manuscript that leapt off the page and onto the stage through an artist grant from the Houston Arts Alliance. In his latest chapbook, Lunas и Moons: A multilingual voyage (2024), Brave ambitiously seeks to demonstrate his range and depth for readers who enjoy experimental and thought-provoking writing.

The multilingual voyage to be embarked on cannot simply be traced on a map or plotted on a navigation chart. Instead, Brave takes the reader through a series of five different transmutations of the written word—primarily in English and Spanish with a sprinkling of other tongues. The texts include two poems (one translated and one contrapuntal) and three short stories (from hybrid to concrete). Each piece is like a separate planet orbiting an unnamed sun, idea, or feeling. They do not provide the readers with any answers. Hence, Lunas и Moons is perfect for those willing to face discomfort and embrace the beauty of the unknown.

While the pieces explore philosophical questions such as purpose, relationships, and legacy, what brings a down-to-earth quality to Lunas и Moons is the flesh and the characters that inhabit these bodies. There are no superhumans, but rather a cast of solitary travelers and different couples experiencing and engaging with reality in distinct ways. The experimental nature of the pieces allows the reader to pierce through key experiences in our daily lives. For instance, I found myself reflecting on what gets buried under our words and what gets lost in translation, both literally and during the transfiguration of a thought into speech.

The common thread throughout the chapbook is Brave’s prose and poetic voice, which keeps the reader curious and engaged, whether they are in a Thracian wood, at the Iguazú Falls, a cemetery, or up in space. My experience reading was one of questioning, looking for answers, returning, and seeing something new. Overall, Lunas и Moons is a chapbook that favors movement over stagnation. Amidst the imperfect paths, splits between legend and reality, tragicomedy, and astral phantasmagoria the reader can get lost in the human experience.