Another mouthful....
Let us know what you have been reading in October.
I myself have embarked on a recent release by NYRB entitled Tyrant Banderas. This is something of an iconic novel in the annals of 'Latin American' (loosely termed here) fiction by the Spanish dramatist and novelist Ramon María Valle-Incla. This is the first English translation since 1929 of a problematic novel due in part at least to the various locale dialects Valle-Incla employs throughout the story.
Tyrant Banderas is one of the early dictatorship novels of 20th Century fiction and influenced two more recently translated iconic classics in Garcia Marques' Autumn Of The Patriarch and Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat.
A sense of the Macabre and Fantastic claw at the edges of this fractured collage featuring a ruthless dictator set in an imaginary country that closely resembles Mexico (as I understand it). I am not far progressed into the pages of this book yet but I'm enjoying it so far.
Here's a grab from the book's blurb to provide with you a more complete picture:
It is the Day of the Dead, and revolution has broken out, creating mayhem from Baby Roach’s Cathouse to the Harris Circus to the deep jungle of Tico Maipú. Tyrant Banderas steps forth, assuring all that he is in favor of freedom of assembly and democratic opposition. Mean*while, his secret police lock up, torture, and execute students and Indian peasants in a sinister castle by the sea where even the sharks have tired of a diet of revolutionary flesh. Then the opposition strikes back. They besiege the dictator’s citadel, hoping to bring justice to a downtrodden, starving populace.
Let us know what you have been reading in October.
I myself have embarked on a recent release by NYRB entitled Tyrant Banderas. This is something of an iconic novel in the annals of 'Latin American' (loosely termed here) fiction by the Spanish dramatist and novelist Ramon María Valle-Incla. This is the first English translation since 1929 of a problematic novel due in part at least to the various locale dialects Valle-Incla employs throughout the story.
Tyrant Banderas is one of the early dictatorship novels of 20th Century fiction and influenced two more recently translated iconic classics in Garcia Marques' Autumn Of The Patriarch and Vargas Llosa's Feast of the Goat.
A sense of the Macabre and Fantastic claw at the edges of this fractured collage featuring a ruthless dictator set in an imaginary country that closely resembles Mexico (as I understand it). I am not far progressed into the pages of this book yet but I'm enjoying it so far.
Here's a grab from the book's blurb to provide with you a more complete picture:
It is the Day of the Dead, and revolution has broken out, creating mayhem from Baby Roach’s Cathouse to the Harris Circus to the deep jungle of Tico Maipú. Tyrant Banderas steps forth, assuring all that he is in favor of freedom of assembly and democratic opposition. Mean*while, his secret police lock up, torture, and execute students and Indian peasants in a sinister castle by the sea where even the sharks have tired of a diet of revolutionary flesh. Then the opposition strikes back. They besiege the dictator’s citadel, hoping to bring justice to a downtrodden, starving populace.
