Central & South American Literature

I just picked up a book by a Chilean author living in Mexico...Roberto Bolano (the book is Amulet. Publishers Weekly gave a starred review to one of his novels so I went looking for it. The one I wanted wasn't on the store shelf but two other newly published novels by him were, so I chose another. He seems relatively young, has anyone read him?

What about other contemporary Central and South American authors who have been translated into English? Recommendations?

I really enjoyed The House of the Spirits and Eva Luna, by Isabel Allende, another Chilean author (and relatively popular on LT, I see--over 1000 copies of The House of the Spirits). I read The Infinite Plan, which I believe was her first written in English, but didn't like that as much. I haven't read any of her more recent work, although I have Zorro and Paula (the latter is nonfiction).

Yes, I have read some Allende and enjoyed it. And yes, her books have been quite popular here in the states, I think Daughter of Fortune was an Oprah pick.

I haven't read a lot of South American fiction recently but, in his brief and fascinating memoir, If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, Gregory Rabassa discusses each of the works he's translated from the Spanish and the Portuguese -- it made me want to read many of them, but I haven't so far. He is, as you probably know, one of the premier translators of South and Central American literature, most famously of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

And, although not fiction, the first volume of Marquez's autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, was wonderful.

On Bolano--I read the first two books of his to be translated By night in Chile and Distant Star. He also appears (Bolano that is) as a character in Javier Cercas's Soldiers of Salamis which is a novel somewhat about the Spanish Civil War. Cercas is a Spaniard. There are quite a number of great writers and works out of Central and South America I'd recommend. A few favorites.

Ricardo Piglia--Artificial respiration and Money to burn.
Roberto Arlt--The Seven Madmen.
Mario Vargas Llosa--Conversation in the Cathedral-The war of the end of the world-The feast of the goat.

#5 apparently Bolano has a stand-in for himself in some of his own books. Interesting.

A Boston Globe columnist passed a recommendation on to me for a young Peruvain author, Daniel Alarcón. His Lost City Radio came out last month, I believe. She was looking forward to hearing him when he came to town.

I did read Colombian author James Canón's Tales from the Town of Widows which also came out recently. It's an odd book, humorous, yet puncuated with these small potent testimonials from the men who were conscripted into service. While entertaining at times, I'm not sure the novel works.

Soldiers of Salamis is something of a fictionalized true story apparently. Cercas--a newspaperman runs into Bolano who is living in exile from Pinochet's Chile and Roberto encourages him to write for a living. It's a little complicated about how else Bolano fits into it but as coincidence has it Bolano had become friends as a teenager with an old-Spanish exile from the civil war--a man who Cercas does not know by name but he is looking for a man who danced a paso doble who had spared the life of a politician who would later have a son Rafael Ferlosio a well known Spanish novelist who Cercas had once interviewed and had told him this story about his father.

Here's part of the synopsis for the Bolano book I picked up recently (from the New Directions website).
Amulet is a monologue, like Bolaño's acclaimed debut in English, By Night in Chile. The speaker is Auxilio Lacouture, a Uruguayan woman who moved to Mexico in the 1960s, becoming the "Mother of Mexican Poetry," hanging out with the young poets in the cafés and bars of the University. She's tall, thin, and blonde, and her favorite young poet in the 1970s is none other than Arturo Belano (Bolaño's fictional stand-in throughout his books).

Central and South American literature is a weak area in my reading, so I will have to keep this in mind as I add to the TBR pile.

We all have holes. Asia and Africa are not real strengths of mine and actually I only started reading more Latin American literature 5 or 6 years ago.
Nicanor Parra a Chilean is one of my favorite poets. He invented what he called anti-poetry. Not for all tastes--he is often crude and sarcastic. Alvaro Mutis a Colombian is a close friend of Garcia Marquez. He writes novellas and poetry--the poetry has not been translated. The novellas concern an itinerant sailor named Maqroll. They are adventure novels sometimes with a bent towards the natural--sometimes towards the supernatural. Some are at sea--some on land. Ernesto Sabato , Mempo Giardinelli and Enrique Medina are three Argentines I like a lot. A warning about Medina though--his works are chock full of violence and rage. Paco Ignacio Taibo is a particularly good Mexican crime or noir fiction writer.
An excellent female writer from Mexico would be Rosario Castellanos. I really liked The book of Lamentations in particular.

As I know you like fantasy and aren't put off by a rather baroque writing style, I suggest you give Argentinean author Federico Andahazi a try. His novel The Merciful Women is a darkly fantastic, wryly humorous, neo-Gothic take on the already more than a little fantastic and Gothic history of Byron, the Shelleys and Polidori's infamous stay at the villa near Lake Geneva. Nothing too deep or serious but a fun read for those interested in the Romantics. I've seen the hardcover book remaindered locally and online for less than $5.00-a good deal.

marietherese--that sounds like something Ben Waugh might like. It also reminds me of Emmanuel Carrere's Gothic Romance. Same characters--same setting and seems kind of like the same kind of take.

Can I add Death in the Andes to Iriley's list of Llosa? I thought it was touching, disturbing and funny. The other Llosa I have read is Who Killed Palomino Molero?, which I didn't get on with as well, despite the two books being very similar.

I loved Budapest by Brazilian author and musician Chico Buarque. Its about a ghost writer from Brazil who travels to Budapest, and the linguistic, literary and romantic adventures that ensue. Interestingly, Buarque is more famous in Brazil as a composer and musician than as author, even though he's written several novels.

#13> slovenka, I confess I knew Chico Buarque as a musician only!

I am a huge fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I just finished Memories of My Melancholy Whores and enjoyed it greatly. It is about a 90 year old man whose life changes when he finally, and inadvertently, allows love into his life.

Another book from Brazil, that I recall having read in college, would be Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon by Jorge Amado.

Basbooks- as i was reading through the thread I was getting anxious to mention Gabriel Garcia Marquez and began to wonder whether his fame and Nobel Prize had worn thin - in my eyes many of his books are glorious- of course One Hundred Years of Solitude and i did recently enjoy Memories of My Melancholy Whores getting a kick out of the amorous meanderings of an aged man in his 90's.

Another giant not yet mentioned- Jorge Luis Borges-the great Argentine master of the short fiction form.

Another Argentine is Tomas Eloy Martinez- THe Tango Singer and The Peron Novel are both well done.

There are some interesting threads on this topic at another group:Fiction,South American -Argentine Writers.

I just picked up a short book - a collection of short fiction - by Argentine author César Aira. It is reviewed favorably in the latest edition of World Literature Today. I hope to get to it before the semester begins.

A satirical book I read about Argentinian politics years ago was Gods, the Little Guys, and the Police by Humberto Costantini. It makes the Greek/Roman Gods into politicians with all their foibles.

My mistake in #18, Aira's book turned out to be a novelette, not a collection of short fiction.

While away I finished How I Became a Nun (by César Aira, as previously mentioned) which is a clever little story that wanders in and out of a child's imaginings (whether delirium-based, fear-based, fantasy-based) - supposedly the child is César, but he thinks himself a girl. It might have been tedious in a full-length novel, but I enjoyed it in this short form.

I recently read Little star of Bela Lua by a brazillian author who lives in the US now Luana Monteiro. I really enjoyed it. Her writing style evoked the jungle very beautifully and all of the characters were really well drawn, especially for short stories!

fikustree, wasn't that a great collection of short fiction!? I read an ARC of it quite some time ago.

yes, I really loved it. I have read it a couple times now, it stuck with me. Have you read anything else by Monteiro?

I'd like to mention Manuel Puig for Betrayed by Rita Hayworth & kiss of the Spider Woman. The Lost Steps by Alejo Carpentier is my all time favorite Latin American novel- about going into the amazonian jungle to discover the origin of music, and discovering a culture completely attuned to nature. it is a beautiful book.

> 24 I agree with your choices. Manuel Puig is a much overlooked Latin American author.
This is an interesting article about Kiss of the Spider Woman and the difficulty of adapting it Adapting Kiss.

I'm not sure I agree with your reading of The Lost Steps though. For all the beauty found in the jungle there is savagery, the culture may be attuned to nature but it has no art.

another excellent discussion of Roberto Bolano"s Savage Detectives but in the wider context of what makes Latin American literature distintive from other threads...

see in :SLATE...Mayhem in Mexico City by Paul Berman
http://www.slate.com/id/2173485/fr/flyout

For anyone interested in tracking down Latin American fiction in English, here is a great starting point (posted by benwaugh on the "South American Fiction-Argentine Writers" group): http://www.ccsf.edu/Library/latambib.pdf . The document is a 140 page country-by-country list of all translated works entitled "Latin American Fiction in Translation: A Bibliography", compiled by João C. Barretto in 2004.

I would certainly agree that Manuel Puig should be wider known, though I've only read the superb Kiss of the Spider Woman. Mario Benedetti's La tregua (not sure this exists in English) is excellent as is Angeles Mastretta's Lovesick. I am amazed that Juan Jose Saer has remained in relative obscurity. I relished every page of The Investigation (a real surprise for me as detective novels are not my cup of tea). It's a wonderfully written novella, so evocative you can feel the heat of Santa Fe shimmering off the page one moment and the winter cold of Paris the next. Amongst better known authors, almost anything by García Márquez or Vargas Llosa is worthwhile.

For Brazilian literature, I have liked Moacyr Scliar. I own Carnival of the Animals and Max and the Cats and have read two others from the library a number of years ago. He writes in the fantasy/magic realism vein. He is a doctor and is Jewish.

Also, I liked Jorge Amado's Tent of Miracles, also in the magic realism style. I need to pick up Gabriela, clove and cinnamon already mentioned.

A non-literary bestseller from Brazil is Paulo Coelho, whose biggest work is The Alchemist, for me quite readable.

In addition to many of those named above, I am a fan of Isabel Allende, who, although living in the United States is certainly a Latin American writer by influence and heritage.

I am enjoying poetry by Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda at the moment as well.

Rabassa is a wonderful translator. I found him, not through Garcia Marquez by through Eduardo Galeano--The Book of Embraces, I think. Galeano can be a fiery political writer, but some of his gentler stuff is just lovely. His Memory of Fire trilogy (Faces and Masks, etc.) is very much worth seeking out--he betrays his politics at times but it's one of the most innovative ways of telling history. Much of his best stuff isn't quite fiction and not quite non-fiction either, and Rabassa does a wonderful job as a translator.

If you like Gregory Rabassa as a translator, you will probably enjoy his book If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, a fascinating combination of memoir and explanation of how he translated different books.

Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis.

Edit: Oh, sorry, I didn't notice this was about contemporary authors, which he isn't.

I just finished The War of The End of The World by Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian writing historical fiction about Bahia, Brazil. Phenomenal piece of literature!

Just wanted to mention an important Cuban novel, Paradiso by jose Lezama Lima.

The Death of Artemio cruz by Carlos Fuentes is fairly well known. Also the great imo poetry of the Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo.

An interesting novelist is Ciro Alegria who wrote El Mundo es ancho y Ajeno which was translated, but i dont know the exact title in english. (Wide and alien is the world?) I knew him in Puerto rico in 1950. He was my next door neighbor, and married to a lady professor at the University of Puerto Rico where my husband taught.

Vicente Huidobro was an wonderful Chilean poet who wrote in French and Spanish. (A sort of e.e. cummings type).

Some women novelists are Sandra Cisneros for The House on mango Street, and The Time of the Butterflies and How the Garcia girls lost their Accents by Julia Alvarez. A Puerto Rican novelist is Rosario Ferre.

The woman playright Maria fornes did some experimental work in the U.S.

Luisa Valenzuela is an award winning Argentinian magic realist. one of her books from the eighties is A Lizard''s Tail.

I stand corrected..Rabassa didn't ever translate Galeano. Not sure why I thought so. I did just buy If This Be Treason, though

By Manuel Puig, I strongly recommend Cae la Noche Tropical, written as letters between two elderly Argentine sisters living in Rio de Janeiro. Enchanting!

If you are not acquainted with Ana Lydia Vega of Puerto Rico, you simply must read Pasion de historia/historia de pasion, virgenes y martires, and Esperando a Lolo which are modern, feminist, and clever.

Well, I'll ask over here... varielle & samthepaintman are running off to Costa Rica in January. Any book tips will be greatly appreciated.

>13 slovenka:, >14 aluvalibri: - Although certainly most well known outside Brazil as a singer-composer of music, Chico Buarque is also known in Brazil as a playwright and author. Solanka mentioned his 2003 novel, Budapest. His latest novel, Leite Derramado (meaning "Spilt Milk") recently won Brazil's Prêmio Jabuti as the best novel of 2009. The Prêmio Jabuti (Tortoise Prize) is Brazil's equivalent to France's Prix Goncourt, or the USA's Pulitzer or National Book Award.

From what I've been able to locate on the internet, it appears that Leite Derramado has not yet been translated into English. When it appears, I would highly recommend giving it a try. It's a great read.


Prêmio Jabuti website (in Portuguese)