Category: Columbia

Liveforever by Andrés Caicedo

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andres caicedo liveforever

Liveforever by  Andrés Caicedo

Columbian fiction

Orginal title – ¡Que viva la música!

Translator – Frank Wynne

Source – Review copy

“Caicedo is the missing link of the lost boom. He is the first enemy of Macondo. I do not know if he committed suicide or maybe was killed by García Márquez and the dominant culture of those times. He was less the rocker that the Colombians want and more an intellectual. a super genius tormented nerd. He had imbalances, anguish of living. He was not comfortable with the life. He had problems to stay on his foot. And he had to write in order to survive. He killed himself because he saw too much.”

Albeto Fuguet the acclaimed Chilean writer on his early death .

Now as any one who has been following the books read section of this blog will know I read this a few months ago ,but at time I was reading it was when Richard and I started discussing Spanish Lit month again .I want this to be the first book of the second Spanish lit month .I first heard of this book when Frank the translator mentioned it was meant to be coming a couple of years ago ,but with delays it didn’t arrive to this year .What first grabbed me was when I read up about  Andrés Caicedo life ,this was his only book ,he killed himself after this book came out .He had said to live more than twenty-five years was madness .He lived in Cali the main setting for the book ,had a deep love of cinema which meant he had dreamed of selling his plays to Roger Corman .He ran a club showing films and discussing the films with the students and intellectuals of Cali .Anyway for more go to his Wiki page  .

I’m blonde ,blondissima .So blonde that guys say ,hey angel ,you only have to flick that lustrous mane of hair over my face to free me of the shadows hounding me .it was no shadow on their faces but death .And I was scared to lose my sheen .

The opening lines of Liveforever .

 

Now to the book ,it’s a sort of coming of age story ,we spend time with María del Carmen Huerta ,Her story is told as she is now a high class prostitute ,her best days in that job behind her she looks at her life and this one day .The day she he miss school and just dance the way through the city of Cali ,from her own end of the city the upper class part of town ,her father is the man the photos the upper classes of the city ,the music she hears and moves to is the rolling stones western rock ,but as she moves down into the seedier darker side of the city ,junkies and drugs but also the salsa beats drive the city out open doors ,dance schools we see Maria drawn further into this world as her body pulsates with the beats of this part of town .As we see Maria drift between the groups within the city .Maria journey is one for her of discovery about herself and her world .

Who knows who maps our path through this world or how they do so ; here in beautiful Cali I am the queen of guganco I stepped out into the street ,into the sky so clear ! An enormous moon and deep wind from the mountains bore witness to my devastating revelations in that moment : that everything in life is lyrics ,is words .Maybe my words are of  a different order .

I found these lines so poetic ,Guganco is a type of Cuban rumba .

Now its hard not to miss connection with other books ,frank posted a review of this book that mention catch in the rye ,yes I agree partly with that but Maria isn’t a Holden for me .Caicedo was known for his wanting to break away from the writers of the Latin american boom in his writing ,so it hard to compare with writers around him from that time like of Marquez or Lllosa  as seen in the opening quote on this review .No this is far more a book about setting forth ,setting free a mind .A woman discovering herself and her body at the same time ,of course Nada springs to mind ,the Spanish catcher in the rye ,but also the style of literature she was involved with the Tremendisomo ,the world told in its brutal and true way ,having just read Cela another master of this art ,I can see part of this in Caicedo writing the brutal nature of the city of Cali comes alive and burst of the page .Add to that his love of films Corman in particular ,Corman made the film The trip about LSD ,which ike this book caught the experience of taking drugs .The other main part of this book is the music there is a three page discography of the music that is feature within the book ,from the driving rolling stones of the seventies ,through salsa ,I brought a number of the tracks from the discography into a spotify playlist  which I suggest you listen too and get a real feel of the book and the pace of Caicedo writing .So welcome to spanish lit month .

 

Memories of my Melancholy whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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memories of my Melancholy whores

Memories of my Melancholy whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Columbian fiction

Original title – Memoria de mis putas tristes

Translated by Edith Grossman

Source – Library

Well I decide a while ago when news of Gabriel Garcia Marquez having dementia and not in the best of health at this moment in time ,he has won the Nobel prize and sure is a writer I have to say little about as he is one writer in translation that seems to have crossed that magic barrier to be read by everyone regardless of it being in translation (wouldn’t it be great for more writers to break that wall in the reader’s mind )  well up to now I have only one book under review  on the blog by him so hope in coming months to add a few but not being a big rereader at best of times when I was this on in the library which I hadn’t read it seemed a great place to start .

At one time I thought these bed-inspired accounts would serve as a good foundation for a narration of the miseries of my misguided life ,and the title came to me out of the blue .Memories of my Melancholy whores .

The narrator comes up with the actual book title .

Well where to start with Memories of my Melancholy whores ,it is his last book published in English and the last but one in Spanish (that being a collection of his speeches published in Spanish in 2010 ).So the main character in the book is a unamed reporter ,he is on the verge of his 90th birthday ,he decides he wants one last fling with a teen virgin to maybe go out in a blaze of glory  .So he meets the local madam Rosa to set this up ,as we do this the man recalls past women ,the narrator the old man choose a wild life of women over love he recalls his life over the course of the book in small chunks  .He then meets the girl Rosa has found for him Delgradina ,she is 14 and perfect in the old man’s eyes, she has wonderfully flawless skin and hair , because the second he sees her for the first time in his life he falls deeply in love .He shares nights with here but Delgradina isn’t her real name ,he never finds out more about her .

She was surprised when I mentioned the name Delgradina .That isn’t her name ,she said ,her name is …. Don’t tell me I interrupted ,for me she’s Delgradina .She shrugged all right ,after all ,she’s yours,

He never even knows her real name this young girl he has fallen so much for

 

 

Well this is a clever switch on his earlier book love in the time of cholera ,florentino is the flipside of this narrator a man who meet and had to leave his true love for most of his life sleeping with many women ,waiting this story follows a man maybe not knowing it but searching for that true love .Other Marquez traits are there like a  time span narrative , like  in a number of his other books. This book although is told in the present as the man reflects and remembers  the  nine decades in which he has lived   and the changing scenery around him  ,Marquez has always been the master of regret and solitude in his books his two best novels are rife with it  both present in this book .What is this man ?What is the sum of his life ? yes he is a fairly well-known report that has in the recent times written a weekly piece on the town and its life .But is that enough ? questions always questions  in Marquez (well that is what I come away with questions of life ) false turns ,missed chances ,lost loves and that one true love .If this is his last book it is a fitting tribute to the man as it has what made him the star he has been for the last fifty years and I would say is short enough for even those none readers to try .One can say yes maybe a 90-year-old and 14 year is wrong ,but the actual sex and meeting is a sideline in this book .The main themes are Marquez stand fare .

Have you read this book ?

Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa

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Necropolis-cover

Necropolis by Santiago Gamboa

Columbian Fiction

Original title Necropolis

Translator Howard Curtis

Source Review Copy

Well I had a load of long and complex novels last year but two I had left to mull over in my mind before reviewing .This was one the other being Laszlo Krasznahokai ‘s Satantango .So Santiago Gamboa is considered one of the rising stars of Latin American literature .He studied literature at Bogotá university before moving to Europe and settling in Paris where he furthered his studies studying Cuban literature .He published his first novel in 1995 aged 30 ,this Necropolis is his seventh novel and his first to be translated into English .The book won the  Premio La Otra Orilla award .

Dear writer ,in view of your work ,we have the pleasure of inviting you to the international congress on biography and memory (ICBM),to be held in the city of Jerusalem from 18 – 25 may

part of the invite that starts and is the framing device for the story .

So Necropolis is a novel is  about an unnamed Columbian  writer,who has been struggling for a couple of  years with his craft of writing and illness .But he is very intrigued when he receives a very strange offer from the ICBM (International Congress on Biography and Memory ),Now at first he wonders why but it seems legitimate so he says he will attend ,even thou he hasn’t in his mind written anything overtly biographical .So he sets off from his base in Rome to the conference which happens to be in Jerusalem.So he receives a copy from the ICBM OF attendees at the conferences and it is far to say apart from one man who also comes from Columbia like the writer these people have little in common .So we go to the conference and we see the first speaker talk this is mixed with our narrator as he meets his fellow delegates and listens to the talk by Jose Maturana ,this is about a church he became involved in and the collapse of this  cult like church and how the main man one Walter De la salle disappeared  .Next think is this guy turns up dead and we have what maybe a murder or a suicide ? then the action moves away from this to the other people and there stories at the conference an Italian  porn star ,a businessman who has been trying to deals with the Farc ,( a terrorist group in Columbia )  and a pastor each of these stories we hear are about fifty pages long  finally we return to find out what happen to Jose and was it murder ?

  The life story I am about to relate is a harsh and sometimes even macabre one, so I hope there are no young people in the room ,There are situations that the inexperienced or the innocent may find disturbing .I’m not sure on the conferences policy on this ,and I shall certainly go ahead and tell my story anyway .But it might be a good idea to check at the entrance that all members of audience are of legal age just for today .

Sabina telling her story to the conferences

Well that is  brief description of  this.It is very hard to grasp without getting  to in-depth with the story or stories .This book has a feel of ambition about it and scope .The book is set up really as a collection of stories and a murder story ,it has a feel rather like those classic tales of literature .In  a number of reviews I saw The Decameron is mentioned as one such  collection ,but I felt Canterbury tales could also work as the book is set round the conference it is a framing device like the trip the pilgrims took,  these people have been drawn together  at the king David hotel too essentially tell their stories .The tales we are told by the delegates are about love ,sex ,good and evil . Ambitious as you can tell ,it works and one feels the could be a number of other stories come from this one book in the future . Santiago Gamboa has assumed the mantel of writers like Marquez and Bolano .

Have you read this book ?

Do you have a favourite latin american work of fiction ?

The sound of things falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

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the sounds of things falling

The sounds of things falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

Columbian fiction

Spanish title El ruido de las cosas al caer

Translator Anne McLean

Source Review copy

Jean Gabriel Vasquez is a Columbian writer ,This is his third novel ,he studied law ,after getting his degree he lived in france in the late 1990’s then Belgium finally settling in Barcelona in Spain .I have previously reviewed his second novel the secret history of Costaguana which was on the IFFP list two years ago .

The first hippopotamus ,a male the colour of black pearls weighing a ton and a half ,was shot dead in the middle of 2009 .He’d escaped two years before from Pablo Escobar’s old zoo in the Magdalena valley ,and during that time of freedom had destroyed crops ,invaded drinking troughs ,terrified fishermen and even attacked the breeding bulls at a cattle ranch .

the opening of the novel .

So I have read his previous two novel both set in the past ,as is this his latest but this is set more in the present past than his previous two .This is a close look at his homelands distant past .This book deals with the horror of the drug trade and its effects on people .I was struck by the opening of this book that sees a Hippo that has escape from the zoo that was owned by the notorious drugs baron Pablo Escobar ,this reminded me of the novella down the rabbit hole by Juan Pablo Villabos which saw a young boy wanting a pygmy hippo he was actually the sone of a Mexican drugs baron .Anyway back to this book the shooting of the hippo was read by Antonio Yammara now a teaching law ,but his has a Proustian moment reading this and is brought back to the mid 90’s and the hieght of the drug cartels stranglehold on Columbia .Yammara was a young lawyer not overly happy with his lot and spent afternoons in a pool hall this is where he meet Ricardo Laverde ,this guy is a pilot and is maybe mixed up with the wrong people but is someone the young Yammara made a connection with this guy he has spent time in prison and gives Yammara a tape and then is shortly gunned down ,This tape and his wanting to find out more about Ricardo Laverde and how he end up gunned down ,in doing so we see the start and the rise of the drug trade in Columbia .Added to that Ricardo’s daughter and a love story in a way you get a lot in this book.I saw this quest as Yammara trying to find himself as well as what happened and maybe find his place in the world .

A black cassette with an orange label .On that labe a single word BASF

“it is just side A ” ,Consu told me “when your finished listening to it ,leave it all beside the stove .There where the matches are .And make sure the door’s closed properly when you leave ”

The tape from Ricardo that sets Yammara on his quest .

Well this book gives you a real insight into how Columbia fell apart and is slowly dragging its self out of the dark times .I felt in parts this was a personnel story Vasquez was telling a story of his homeland and its distant past through his eyes in a way he did study law and in some ways you could see Yammara as maybe an alternate Vasquez had he stayed in Columbia and not gone to France.What we get is an unflinching portrait ,we all remember the names of people like Escobar ,but until I read this I had not seen the newtons cradle like effect of the drugs trade on every one in Columbia .As ever you can’t pick fault with the twice IFFP winning translator Anne Maclean work on this book it won the Premio Alfaguara on of the best regard and richest literary prize for spanish language fiction other recent winners include Santiago Roncagliolo and Andres Neuman both of which are under review here at winstonsdad .

Have you read Juan Gabriel Vasquez ?

The secret history of Costaguana by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

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Juan Vasquez is a Columbian writer ,he studied in Colombia then in France ,living in Belgium then spain in Barcelona where he lives today his first novel was a surprise hit the informers this is his second novel ,he has just published a third in spanish.he has also translated books into spanish .
The book is a imagine tale based round the writing of Conrad’s great latin American novel Nostromo .We meet Jose Altamirano a Colombian ,that has come to live in London ,he has escaped the horrors he saw and witnessed , after the thousand day war in his homeland ,that ran between the two main parties in colombia as the fought over the Panama canal and its riches .Anyway he is introduced to Joseph Conrad and they talk about books and writers  at the time Conrad  is writing a book about revolution and turmoil in latin america ,so he is asked to recount his experiences and his families experiences during the two years of war .These are colourful and traumatic and highly violent at times involving him and his loved ones ,Conrad eagerly takes notes from what he says  ,he opens his heart to Conrad as he trusts him when the meet ,and in doing so is Keen to see what Conrad has woven from his story .Well when he reads the first part work of Nostromo which is based in the imagined land of Costaguana of the title  not his homeland or own town .Jose is shocked he feels he has been removed from his own story .

But the republic does exist ,I said or rather beseeched him .The province does exist .But the silver mine is really a canal ,a canal between two oceans .I know because I know it .I was born in that republic ,I lived in the Province .I am guilty of its misfortunes
Conrad didn’t answer .
Jose finds he has been recast and removed from his tale .

This is a clever juxtapose on the Conrad novel the table flipped a latin american writing about a latin american in london .We find out a lot about Conrad and his novelistic life as a sailor His travels in africa and how he end up as an English writer even thou he was born in Poland .The book shows the danger of telling writers your story and also how British and European writers rewrote and maybe didn’t acknowledge the people who stories they told in their great books of far-flung places .Now this an imagined piece of parallel fiction .But having reread Nostromo and be reviewing it tomorrow you feel Conrad would have used someone like Jose in his writing process to get the hard facts and feel of the place although he imagine Costaguana it could be anyone of half a dozen countries in south america .The book was longlisted for this years IFFP and was translated by Anne Maclean who won last year IFFP prize .

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK OR THE Conrad Novel ?


Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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source – library

This was the last choice for 2010 of the now named wolves reading group of Frances ,Richard ,Emily and el fay .this book by the nobel winning Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a first hand narrative of the return to his native chile of the Chilean filmmaker Miguel Littin .Littin produce the most well-known and most popular in Chile Chilean film in 1969 El CHacal de Nahueltoro ( Jackal ofNahueltoro ) a true story about a pheasant that killed several children in chile .he has also directed films based on Alejo Carpentiers novel and one of Marquez own short stories .After the coup that saw Allende disposed in his homeland Littin went to Mexico firstly then spain (very like Bolano who also lived in both these countries ) .After the fall of Pinochet the military leader a list of Exiles that could return was released but Littins name wasn’t on the list so the book follow his decision to return anyway and make a striking film called Acta General de chile  he managed to get three european film crews under false filming schedules  to enter the country  and he returned as a Uruguayan businessman to direct the film which followed how people fought against Pinochet in chile ,at this time this was still a sensitive subject with in chile and could have led to Littin being arrested .we see him and his assistant go through and meet people but to find out what more happened maybe you should read the book .

When the immigration officer opened my passport ,I knew that if he were to look into my eyes he would discover my deception .There were three counters ,all attended by men in uniforms .I had decided to pick the youngest because he seemed to be working the fastest .

Littin’s nervous entry to Chile .

The book was taken from notes Littin kept at the time and worked into this Narrative non fiction by Marquez if in his fiction he may be the master of Magical realism may I suggest this is a work of über realism ,he really caught for me the tension and fear that Littin had in returning to his homeland to make this film at every turn there was a real sense of foreboding ,strange as reading up on Littin before the book I knew the film had been made and the back cover told me that due to the strength of the book and  film that 15000 hundred copies of this book where burnt in Chile .Now to my disappointing the film seems very hard to get hold off .A real shame the other half of what seems to artworks would work wonderfully together .But not to take away from this book which I thoroughly enjoyed and as one of the last books I read last year .Gave me an insight into a subject I knew a bit about but found a little more about and this is what you needed from good Narrative non – fiction .the book was translated by Asa Zatz .