They Shall Not Pass
A Novel of Manhattan and Madrid
By Frederick Mark Kramer
"Language is not for God, but for man to get beyond his primitive feelings…"
In Frederick Mark Kramer’s They Shall Not Pass: A Novel of Manhattan and Madrid, the interior ruminations of disembodied, anonymous voices twist together in slow, constant alternation, and we gradually come to know four main figures: Jacobo, an American who fought in the Spanish Civil War and then returned to New York; Esmeralda, the woman he loved in Spain, who unbeknownst to Jacobo later moved to New York with their child; Conchita, her granddaughter, an actress in experimental off-off-Broadway productions; and Joseph, Jacobo’s grandson by his later marriage, who becomes Conchita’s lover. The weave of their reflective monologues summons up with uncanny concreteness and detail an all-encompassing world: of their past loves, and of the vast but intimate New York City they all shared.
"A thought being thought but not felt is not a thought just a mirage…"
Frederick Mark Kramer is a novelist, playwright and amateur musician living on the Upper West Side of New York City.