An utterly unique and memorable novel, Wild Horses is about the heroin epidemic that swept much of Catalonia in the 1980s, prior to Barcelona's post-Olympic regeneration. Cussà is an accomplished writer (and a translator into Catalan on many British/American authors), with figures as diverse as Homer and Dostoevsky referenced in Wild Horses. Importantly, Cussà never moralises during the course of this work, depicting the action as being a blend between an adventure and a tragedy; the joy and the hell of being on drugs. Think of the journey as being akin to riding a wild horse — once you get on, it's hard to dismount. Not uncoincidentally, heroin is of course colloquially known as ‘horse’. There are moments of pure unbridled hedonism as well as the foreknowledge of pending death. Similar to a trip, Wild Horses is constructed as a series of disjointed fragments (sometimes narrated by different characters), not always chronologically consistent, but which can — with commitment — be assembled into a coherent whole. Importantly, Wild Horses should also be thought of as a distinctly Catalan novel. Having travelled regularly on the Barcelona to Andorra route, Cussà does a superb job too in evoking a sense of place.
By Jordi Cussà