Finds: Rodrigo Blanco Calderón
After taking a good look at the shelf where he keeps his most cherished books, albums and movies, this is what Rodrigo Blanco Calderón decided to share with us.
Maten al León [Kill the Lion] is one of Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s finest novels. Here, the Mexican novelist and playwright invents a Caribbean island called Arepa, where Manuel Belauzarán, a typical Latin American caudillo, reigns. As in his depiction of the Mexican Revolution in Los relámpagos de agosto [The Lightning of August], Ibargüengoitia humorously disassembles our countries’ historical traumas. The epic heroes, the modesty of family women, the dignity of the poor, the progressives’ zeal for civility, and the tyrants’ megalomania – all are transformed into tragicomic outbursts of his characters’ personalities. The relevance of this novel, published in 1969, lies in its pyrrhic moral teaching: we will never attain happiness. It may be, in fact, that misfortunes mark our lives, but no one will deprive us of the right to laugh before the firing line – and transcend.
Finds:
[Ricardo Silva Romero: Girls]
[Betina González: Sweet Days of Discipline]
Translated by Robin Myers
Maten al León [Kill the Lion] is one of Jorge Ibargüengoitia’s finest novels. Here, the Mexican novelist and playwright invents a Caribbean island called Arepa, where Manuel Belauzarán, a typical Latin American caudillo, reigns. As in his depiction of the Mexican Revolution in Los relámpagos de agosto [The Lightning of August], Ibargüengoitia humorously disassembles our countries’ historical traumas. The epic heroes, the modesty of family women, the dignity of the poor, the progressives’ zeal for civility, and the tyrants’ megalomania – all are transformed into tragicomic outbursts of his characters’ personalities. The relevance of this novel, published in 1969, lies in its pyrrhic moral teaching: we will never attain happiness. It may be, in fact, that misfortunes mark our lives, but no one will deprive us of the right to laugh before the firing line – and transcend.
Finds:
[Ricardo Silva Romero: Girls]
[Betina González: Sweet Days of Discipline]
