Tirelessreader
Reading 1 book from every country in the world!
The Big List
Books I've read by language
Book 31: Colombia (Spanish) – El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera = Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ)
Tag Archive | Latin American literature
in Asturias, books, Central America, Central American fiction, Central American literature, culture, death, fiction, Fiction in Spanish, Guatemala, Guatemalan fiction, Guatemalan literature, interrogation, Latin American fiction, Latin American literature, literature, Literature in Spanish, novels, politics, reading, Reading the world, review, world
Book 76: Guatemala (Spanish) – el Señor Presidente = The President (Miguel Angel ASTURIAS)
'The sea looks the same as in the moving pictures, only bigger.'
Camila had heard about the moving pictures which were being shown at the Hundred Doors, close to the cathedral, but she had no idea what they were like. However, after what her cousin had said, she could easily imagine them as she stared at the sea. Everything in motion. Nothing stable. Pictures mingling with other pictures, shifting, breaking in pieces to form a new image every second, in a state that was not solid, not liquid, nor gaseous, but which was the state of life in the sea. A luminous state. Both in the sea and in the moving pictures.
This is a stunning portrait of a dictatorship. It is a place of betrayal – no one can trust anyone (especially not the President!) The whole country is at the whim of one mercurical person. He acts like a cat toying with a mouse. He runs a state of lies, where the weapon is false accusations – the 'truth' must be made to fit what is convenient for the regime. On the one side is his cruelty; on the other, sycophancy.
One of the most chilling sections is a frightening interview with the incoherent, drunken president:
'Do you know, Miguel, that the man who discovered alcohol was looking for an elixir to produce long life?'
'No, Mr President, I didn't know that,' the favourite hastened to reply.
'That's odd'.
'It would be odd, certainly, for a man of such wide knowledge as you, Mr President, who has every right to consider himself as one of the foremost statesmen of modern times, but not for me.'
His Excellency dropped his lids over his eyes, to shut out the chaotic vision of his surroundings that his alcoholic state was presenting him with at the moment.
'M'm, yes, I do know a lot!'
[my translations]
While anyone familiar with any of the world's too numerous dictatorships will find so much that is familiar here, mirrored in the highest literary style, it also reminded me of Trump's White House – and I find it impossible to imagine anyone with a more towering egoism.
All in all, a chilling, masterly novel.
ASTURIAS, Miguel Angel (1889 – 1974), El Señor Presidente, Guatemala, Piedra Santa, 2000, ISBN 99922-5-024-0
In English: The President.
in Amerindians, books, Catholic Church, class struggle, Colonialism, culture, death, Ecuador, Ecuador fiction, Ecuador literature, Ecuadorian fiction, Ecuadorian literature, fiction, Fiction in Spanish, indentured labor, indentured labour, landlords, landowners, Latin American literature, literature, Literature in Spanish, novels, Race relations, racism, reading, Reading the world, roads, South American fiction, South American literature, world
Book 75: Ecuador (Spanish) – Huasipungo = The Villagers (Jorge ICAZA)
'The Indians cling with blind and morbid love to this scrap of land which is lent to them in exchange for the work which they give to the hacienda. What's more: in their ignorance they believe that it is their own property. You know. There they put up their thatched huts, farm their little smallholdings, raise their animals.'
'Sentimentalities! We must overcome all difficulties no matter how hard they may be. The Indians… What? What do the Indians matter to us? To put it better… They must… They must be important TO US… Of course… They can form a very important factor in the business. The arms… The work…'
[my translation]
In 1930s Ecuador, building a road through the jungle should have brought prosperity and modernity to the local Indians, but landowner Don Alfonso only thinks of using it to increase his personal wealth. He robs them first of their labour then of their huasipungos (small plots of land allocated to tenant farmers by the hacienda/large estate owner in exchange for work), causing them to revolt and be massacred. (A more accurate spelling in English orthography would be 'wasipungo').
Icaza was maybe the greatest Ecuadorian author of the 1900s. 'Huasipungo' needs to be seen in the context of the indigenista movement (which was influential across the arts spectrum), which highlighted the oppression and struggles of the indigenous people. Its themes are exploitation by big landowners and gringos, racism (including the racism of the mixed-race mestizos against those with more Indian blood than themselves), class struggle, and the venal, collaborationist church which functions as part of the power structure and has been bribed into using the faith as a weapon against the indigenous.
The casually inhuman treatment of the natives as if they are not people is quite shocking. For example, in one incident, cattle invade the corn fields during the night. Don Alfonso thinks he's a hero just because he had to get up in the middle of the night to do something about it! To reward himself, he rapes a powerless indigenous girl. They are basically treated like property, even the indentured labourers. These have been subjected to forced labour under the very real threat of losing their land.
Fuelled by chicha, a fermented corn drink (which is doled out to them like medicine), they are forced to drive the road through a marsh, against the engineer's advice, leading to a horrific death.
The Ecuadorian Spanish spoken by the indigenous people is not too hard to follow, but is obviously influenced by their native Quechua which only has the vowels a, i, u, so that their Spanish loses its e and o vowels. The Indians tend to speak as a chorus almost like in a Greek tragedy. They are an integral part of the country, while the whites seem out of place and slightly ridiculous.
This important and engaging novel shows in black and white the long shadow that colonialism cast over Ecuador.
ICAZA, Jorge (1906-79), Huasipungo, Madrid, Cátedra, 2013 (originally published 1934), ISBN 978-84-376-1251-5
Icaza, Jorge: The Villagers
in books, Chile, Chilean fiction, Chilean literature, culture, families, fiction, Fiction in Spanish, Latin American literature, literature, Literature in Spanish, Love, Magical realism, novels, reading, Reading the world, review, South American fiction, South American literature, women
Book 69: Chile (Spanish) – Eva Luna (Isabel ALLENDE)
"Do you touch yourself with your hands?"
"Often, child?"
"Every day! How many times?"
"I don't keep count… Many times…"
"That is a grave offence in the eyes of God!"
"I didn't know, Father. And if I put gloves on, is it still a sin?"
"Gloves! But what are you saying, you fool? Are you trying to make fun of me?"
"No, no…" I murmured, terrified, working out that in any event it would be very difficult to wash my face, brush my teeth or scratch with gloves on.
"Promise that you will never do that again. Purity and innocence are the best virtues in a girl. You will say fifty Hail Marys in penitence so that God will forgive you."
"I can't, Father!" I replied, because I only knew how to count up to twenty.
"What do you mean, you can't!" roared the priest, and a rain of saliva crossed the confession box and fell down on me. I ran out.
I love the magical realist novels of Isabel Allende, and I had read almost all of them, except for some reason this one. Isabel's father was the cousin of leftist Chilean president Salvador Allende who was overthrown and killed in a CIA-backed military coup in 1973, leading to an ugly dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. The skinny country is one of my favourites in the world – the landscapes are stunningly beautiful and I found the people lovely, so I still find it inexplicable how some of them could treat their fellow citizens so brutally during the military dictatorship.
Eva Luna is a born story-teller, a South American Scheherazade; she tells the story of her family, which she decorates with whimsical fantasies (unless she is recounting reality). She is in love with a guerrilla fighter living in the mountains. Her life passes through encounters with a Thousand and One Nights cast of strange characters.
The novel is full of bizarre and sometimes funny characters and situations. But there is so much reality in their unrealness. Despite the dark and rocky personal and political history it covers, it is made palatable – more than palatable, delicious – by the resilience and humour shown.
I didn't find it as perfect as The House of the Spirits (La Casa de los espíritus), one of my favourite books, but the writing is beautiful and I still loved it.
ALLENDE, Isabel (1942 – ), Eva Luna, Barcelona, Plaza & Janes, 1991, ISBN 84-01-42268-X
in books, Colonialism, culture, fiction, Fiction in English, Fiction in French, Fiction in German, Fiction in Spanish, literature, Literature in English, literature in French, Literature in German, Literature in Spanish, novels, Publishing, reading, Reading the world, world
Is publishing still living in the age of empires?
So, now that I've posted on more than 50 books, I'm about a quarter of the way through my project to read something from all the countries in the world. Since it is so much in the news at the moment, I thought it might be interesting, as my own personal little comment on globalisation (for what it's worth), to see where the books I've been buying for this challenge were actually published – whether in the country in question, or, more usually, in the former colonial power. Of course, many of these books are translations, usually into English, even though I've tried to read in the original language wherever I could.
When I began this reading project, one of the minor benefits I was hoping for was to do a little foreign aid to support the local publishers and booksellers in each country. And I do almost always buy books when I'm in a country. But it has proved surprisingly hard to find local booksellers that can ship to Australia. So I've ended up buying most from The Book Depository or Amazon. And as for publishers, as you can see it is still largely the former colonial powers that are still in control… although the great collection of exotic lands proves that the USA is not as isolationist as it sometimes seems…
I'll update this list every now and then.
*Acquired by me in the country itself
(You can see that a large number of the ones under "Published in country of origin" are ones I bought on my travels as souvenirs – books are my favorite and usually only travel souvenirs! Some of these poor books had been waiting patiently on the shelf for quite a while for me to get around to reading them!)
Published in country of origin:
*Australia
*Bulgaria
*China
*Egypt
*France
*India
*Macedonia
*Mexico
*Namibia
*Serbia
*Swaziland (? No publishing place given)
Sweden [*gift from Swedish person]
*Thailand
United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales)
Not published in country of origin:
Published in Australia:
Published in France:
*Greece
Published in Germany:
*Romania
*Slovakia
Published in Mexico:
Published in the Netherlands:
Published in the Russian Federation:
Published in Spain:
Published in the UK:
*Albania
Published in the UK/USA:
Published in the USA:
*Cambodia
*Indonesia
*Slovenia
in Adventure, cattle rustling, Classics, Colonialism, crime, culture, culture shock, families, fiction, Fiction in Spanish, Historical fiction, landowners, Literature in Spanish, llanos, magic, novels, progress, reading, Reading the world, South African literature, South American fiction, South American literature, Venezuela, Venezuelan fiction, Venezuelan literature, women, world
Book 49: Venezuela (Spanish) – Doña Bárbara (Rómulo GALLEGOS)
Arid lands, riven by ravines and cut by cracks. Thin cattle, with downcast eyes, were here and there, with a barely believable desperation, licking at the slopes and wastelands of this sad spot. On the ground the skeletons of those that had already succumbed were bleaching, sacrifices of the saltpeter earth which had seized them until starvation, forgetting food; and great flocks of turkey vultures hovered over the stench of the carrion.
This is the classic novel of the Venezuelan Llanos (plains, prairies, steppes). It is one of those novels where the landscape seems to be the main character. But the grasslands are peopled by several memorable characters (even if their names seem a bit TOO obvious to contemporary ears) – the saintly would-be moderniser Dr. Santos, his nemesis the barbarous Doña Bárbara, the evil cardboard-cutout gringo with the unlikely moniker of Mr. Danger, and the 'child of nature' Marisela, on whom Santos performs an Eliza Doolittle-like transformation into a polished lady. The setting is the lawless (yes, that includes the judges and lawyers) cattle country where rustling is a way of life, sanctioned by tradition and ubiquity. There is a Machiavellian power struggle between the great landowners, especially the cousins Dr. Santos and Doña Bárbara, by fair means and foul (and fowl!) Santos' plan to fence off the llanos is inevitable but will see the llaneros' way of life fade into history.
Doña Bárbara is an alpha female who dabbles in magic. No doubt if it was written today we would find a more sympathetic portrayal of the women (and city folk). We shouldn't fall into the trap of extracting a work from the time when it was written. Nevertheless, both of the women are powerful (Doña Bárbara as much so as any of the men) in what must have been a man's world.
While Gallegos sees the inevitability of progress, he is deeply nostalgic for the disappearing way of life of which he has a profound understanding. His attitude towards the burghers of Caracas reminded me of "Clancy of the Overflow" by the Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson:
"…And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.
I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall…"
While I think it would be wrong to see this as an early work of magical realism – there is plenty of magic, as practised by Doña Bárbara, in an overwhelmingly superstitions cultural world – the fact that this seminal work is so largely ignored by English readers is a tragedy that leaves a big hole in their knowledge of Latin American literature. The plot is not at all unrealistic.
The author himself is a fascinating character who became President of Venezuela.
GALLEGOS, Rómulo (1884 – 1969), Doña Bárbara, Madrid: Cátedra, 2014 [originally published 1929], ISBN 978-83-376-1539-4
in books, British fiction, British novels, culture, divorce, Emigration, English fiction, English literature, English novels, European fiction, European literature, Fathers, fiction, Immigration, literature, Love, Marriage, novels, Old people, reading, Reading the world, review, tractors, Ukraine, Ukrainian fiction, Ukrainian literature, world
Book 36: Ukraine (English) – A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina LEWYCKA)
I thought you might be interested in a list of my favourite discoveries from my reading challenge so far, things that I hope you will enjoy as much as I did without the efffort of having to read the whole world to discover them.
I mostly haven't included the great classics here (such as To Kill a Mockingbird) since so many people are already familiar with them. One exception I'll mention is Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. I was expecting it to be as frosty and difficult to get through as a Russian winter, but instead found its relatively light style and quirky viewpoint delightful (despite the morbid subject matter).
Maaza Mengiste's devastating Ethiopian novel Beneath the Lion's Gaze was another unpleasant subject but a searing indictment of dictatorship and military rule.
Pamuk's Snow was such a brilliant portrayal of Turkey's travails at the faultline between Asia and Europe that I want to read all his works.
Please Look After Mother (or Mom, if you have a US edition) by Shin Kyung-Sook really touched my heart.
I think my biggest personal discovery so far is the Albanian Ismail Kadare (post still to come) – I definitely want to read him out!
But one of my favourites – and certainly the funniest so far – is Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian.
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Marina LEWYCKA)
"Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukrainian divorcée. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface a sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside."
Reviewers often claim that a book is "laugh-out-loud funny". I don't know if there's something wrong with me, but I never find myself laughing out loud. But this one (along with Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books) is the exception. It is the hilarious story of a zany, dysfunctional English Ukrainian family. The eccentric father falls for a gold-digging vampish younger woman (Valentina) from Ukraine, and his two very different sibling-rivalry-smitten daughters alternate between trying to save him from himself and pecking at each other. The "eighty-four-year-old teenager" is happiest living in his own private world, "furrowing up trails of gleaming brown ideas" (take that, Chomsky!), and when his real soul-mate turns up (also from Ukraine), it turns out to be platonic (for it is a ((slightly younger)) man who is also under the spell of Valentina) but similarly obsessed with engineering inventions.
And yes, you will learn all you need to know about the history of tractors (don't worry, it's not very much!)
I love the Communist-style cardboard cover design of this edition! and also the wonderfully quirky title, which manages to be both pseudo-boring and intriguing at the same time. I don't think you will forget the wonderful, quirky characters in this novel. And it's very, very funny. This is one that I can't recommend too highly.
LEWYCKA, Marina (1946 – ), A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, London, Penguin, 2006 (first published Viking, 2005), ISBN 978-0-141-02576-6
in Argentina, Argentine fiction, Argentine literature, Argentinian fiction, Argentinian literature, books, crime, culture, death, Dictatorship, fiction, Fiction in Spanish, Gaols, Homosexuality, Jails, Latin American literature, literature, Literature in Spanish, murder, novels, politics, Prisons, punishment, reading, Reading the world, review, South American fiction, South American literature, Uncategorized
Book 35: Argentina (Spanish) – El beso de la mujer araña = The Kiss of the Spider Woman (Manuel PUIG)
In her we see that she has something outré about her, that she's a woman like no other. She seems very young, hardly more than twenty-five, the petite face a little catlike, the nose small and pert, the form of her face is… round rather than oval, the forehead wide, the cheeks large too but then falling to a point, like those of a cat.
This one was due to a late change in plans. I was going to write about Borges' amazing Ficciones which is a collection of fantastic, deep and intricate short stories, but now I've decided to see if I can find a novel from every country to read. (I was also accepting short stories and epics, so I'll have to choose a couple of new titles for some countries I've already read to catch up).
While this is certainly a novel, in a way you could consider Puig's book as a series of short stories, linked by a framing narrative as in the Thousand Nights and One Night for example, although the frame is much more prominent here. (Only one and a bit of these stories made it into the great movie of this novel -filmed for some reason in Brazil, though the book is set in Buenos Aires – the first one, a story of a Nazi romance, along with a short appearance by the Spider Woman herself. As far as we are concerned, the Spider Woman is the gay man Molina, and he intoxicatingly relates the stories, in the manner of film synopses, to his cellmate, Valentín. For we are in prison, although it takes a while for us to realise this (unlike in the movie, where the bars are the first thing we see); Molina is in for "corruption of minors", Valentín is a political prisoner. Each of them is a cosmic mistake: one a woman in a man's body, the other a martyr who doesn't want to be a hero. Each of them in fact, with differing degrees of willingness and success, attempts in turn to entrap the other. Molina, who has been apolitical until now, surprisingly turns out to be the stronger of the two.
When one of the pair is released, the authorities' notes on the minutiae of his actions, as detailed as those of an entomologist studying a spider, are chilling.
One thing I found a little strange is the extensive Burton-like footnotes about the theoretical and psychological aspects of homosexuality, which go on for pages and were presumably placed by the author. Somehow they don't seem necessary or appropriate in a novel.
Kiss of the Spider woman is a tour de force of storytelling and dialogue, powerful and thought-provoking.
PUIG, Manuel (1932 – 1990), El beso de la mujer araña, Barcelona, Biblioteca de Bolsillo, 1994 (first published 1976), ISBN 884-322-3026-X
Book 81: Somalia (English) – Maps (Nuruddin FARAH)
Book 80: Chad (French) – Les racines du yucca = The yucca roots (Koulsy Lamko)
Book 79: Senegal (French) – Les Bouts de bois de Dieu = God's Bits of Wood (Sembene OUSMANE)
Book 78: Cambodia (English) – In the Shadow of the Banyan (Vaddey RATNER)
Book 77: Zambia (English) – The Smoke that Thunders (Dominic MULAISHO)
tirelessreader on 15. Book 15: Egypt (English):…
Jean Beaulieu on 15. Book 15: Egypt (English):…
africabookchallenge on Book 63: Niger (French) – Cami…
'Journey to the West'
'Monkey'
Afghan fiction
Afghan literature
Algerian fiction
Algerian literature
Angolan fiction
Angolan literature
Argentine fiction
Argentine literature
Argentinian fiction
Argentinian literature
Asian fiction
atom bombs
atomic testing
Auguries
Bangladesh; Bangladeshi literature; Bangladeshi fiction
British fiction
British novels
Burkina Faso fiction
Burkina Faso literature
Burmese fiction
Burmese literature
Buru Quartet
Cairo Trilogy
Cambodian fiction
Cambodian literature
Cameroonian fiction
Cameroonian literature
Canadian fiction
Catalan fiction
cattle rustling
Côte d'Ivoire fiction
Côte d'Ivoire literature
Ceauşescu
Central American fiction
Central American literature
Central Asian fiction
Central Asian literature
Chad fiction
Chad literature
Child of All Nations
Chilean fiction
Chilean literature
Chinese fiction
Christa Wolf
Congo fiction
Congo literature
coups d'état
decolonisation
delinquents
Democratic Republic of Congo fiction
Democratic Republic of Congo literature
Dostoyevsky
Dutch East Indies
Dutch fiction
Dutch novels
East African fiction
East African literature
East German fiction
East German literature
East Turkistan
Ecuador fiction
Ecuador literature
Ecuadorian fiction
Ecuadorian literature
Egyptian fiction
Egyptian literature
English classics
English fiction
Ethiopian fiction
Ethiopian literature
European fiction
Faxian
Fiction in English
fiction in Esperanto
Fiction in French
Fiction in German
Fiction in Spanish
French fiction
genetic deformities
German Democratic Republic
German fiction
Ghanaian fiction
Ghanaian literature
Gina Nahai
Godan
griots
Guatemalan fiction
Guatemalan literature
Hedin
House of Glass
hunchback
indentured labor
indentured labour
Indonesian fiction
Indonesian literature
Indonesian politics
Iranian fiction
Iranian literature
Iraqi fiction
Iraqi literature
Italian fiction
Ivoirian fiction
Ivory Coast fiction
Ivory Coast literature
Jails
Japanese fiction
Kashmir fiction
Kashmir literature
Kazakh fiction
Kazakh literature
Kenyan fiction
Kenyan literature
Korean fiction
Kurdish fiction
Kurdish literature
Latin American fiction
literature in Dutch
Literature in English
literature in Esperanto
literature in French
Literature in German
Literature in Spanish
Lop Nor
Loulan
Madagascar fiction
Madagascar literature
Malawi fiction
Malawi literature
Malaysian fiction
Malaysian literature
Mali fiction
Mali literature
marine biologists
Mexican fiction
Mexican literature
Middle Eastern fiction
Middle Eastern literature
Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith
Moroccan fiction
Moroccan literature
Mozambique fiction
Mozambique literature
Myanmar fiction
Myanmar literature
Nahai
Nepalese books
Nepalese fiction
Nepalese literature
Nepali books
Nepali fiction
Nepali literature
Netherlands East Indies
Netherlands fiction
Netherlands literature
Nigerian fiction
Nigerien fiction
Nigerien literature
Nobel Prize for Literature
North African fiction
North African literature
North American fiction
North American literature
North Korean fiction
North Korean literature
North Yemen
Pakistan fiction
Pakistan literature
Pakistani fiction
Pakistani literature
Peruvian fiction
Peruvian literature
pilgrimage to Mecca
Polish fiction
Polish literature
praise-singers
Pramoedya Toer
radiation sickness
Reading the world
Romanian fiction
Romanian literature
Russian fiction
Saudi Arabian fiction
Saudi Arabian literature
Scottish fiction
Senegal fiction
Senegalese fiction
Senegalese literature
Shanshan
Somalian fiction
Somalian literature
South African fiction
South African literature
South American fiction
South American literature
South Korean fiction
South Korean literature
Spanish fiction
Sri Lankan fiction
Sri Lankan literature
Sudanese fiction
Sudanese literature
Syrian fiction
Syrian literature
Taiwanese fiction
Taiwanese literature
Taklamakan
Tanzanian fiction
Tanzanian literature
Thai Literature
This Earth of Mankind
Tripitaka
Ugandan fiction
Ugandan literature
Uighuristan
Ukrainian fiction
Ukrainian literature
United States literature
Uzbek fiction
Uzbek literature
Venezuelan fiction
Venezuelan literature
Vietnamese literature
Welsh fiction
West African fiction
West African literature
Western Regions
witch doctors
Xinjiang fiction
Xinjiang literature
Xiongnu
Xuanzang
Yamusangie
Yemeni fiction
Yemeni literature
Zambian fiction
Zambian literature