In 1993, the French literary world is shaken by the arrival of what not hesitate to describe as a masterpiece, pure love, a perfectly unknown author (although it has previously already published a novel, also of great value: A Indecent souvenir). Its author by the name of Agustina Izquierdo. It is known what his publisher transmitted: Spanish-born daughter of exiles in France of the Spanish civil war, back in time to live in the Catalonia of his parents, where his trail is lost. Nothing else: an unknown illustrious writer, by all critics, a French admirable.

But from the first moment come the voices of those who suspect about who might be behind that name: Pascal Quignard, ie, the "left hand" of Pascal Quignard, according to Le Monde Josyane Savigneau, hand charge of writing more freely about their "erotic obsessions." Attribution has had from Quignard an angry response: "They charged me four pseudonyms. All are false. The difficult part in collective life is that we can not defend ourselves against slanderous imputations without accredit. [...] It should be neglected. Here, even, we must keep quiet. "But ...

The French editor says Pure love blunt: "Agustina Izquierdo is not Pascal Quignard. . Editor of all books Agustina Izquierdo and two of Pascal Quignard, I am, I think, well placed to deny and do categorically "To which, however, the literary critic of the same magazine answers:" Reader until today all Pascal Quignard books and two novels Agustina Izquierdo, I am well placed to maintain that, in any case, who narrates is Pascal Quignard ... "Perhaps both were right.

Today, Pure love is an almost anonymous work. Excessive. Back into the darkness from which it emerged, Agustina Izquierdo remains as missing as always was. Meanwhile, the silence of Quignard has become the tacit assent of his own. Because, even silent, as he himself asked to stay, play attribution, which goes so it can not be a mere chance, as another reviewer noted that "Agustina Izquierdo 'is an anagram of" oui taisez Quignard "continues ( "yes, Quignard street" or "yes, shut Quignard"). So Quignard, quiet, keep the pure love outside of his work, not behind a false name, but after a name only names the request Quignard silence itself. A silence that, however, writes and is proposed as secret writing.

Mystery of a name which in turn is located beside the mystery of no less puzzling title: Pure love. Not "a" pure love, of loving passion of the protagonists of the story, but "the" pure love. What is this love? What is purity? Perhaps reading this book we could say, but as long as we read it, because he, the book seems to close in on itself, pushing himself to any reader, denouncing its artificiality with his last words: "when we read, always we pretend to read.