Reading...

As soon as I saw Isabel Allende’s newest novel I had to get it. I adore Isabel Allende. Her books make me feel wonderful and make me want to travel Latin America. Now from reading Island Beneath The Sea I really want to travel to the Dominican Republic and back to New Orleans. (...)
I loved this book. For starters the cover is beautiful and makes you want to read it every time you look at it. I love books that have amazing covers – it makes all the difference when deciding what to buy and what not to. This book is wonderfully written. It is set in Haiti (before it was Haiti) and is centered around a slave named Zarite. In the first page of the book we discover that she is now free – as are her children – and the book tells the story of how she became free.

(Books And So Many More Books)

Red April appealed to me for a number of reasons. The fact that the author was the youngest person ever to win the Alfaguara Prize (the most prestigious award for Spanish Literature) intrigued me. This, along with comparisons to Roberto Bolaño and a translation from the Queen of Spanish literature, Edith Grossman, had me requesting a copy from the publisher. I’m really pleased that I did as it is a fantastic book.
Red April is set in Peru and follows an unambitious police prosecutor who finds himself at the centre of a bizarre murder investigation. The corruption and unstable political situation of the country make the task of discovering the murderer even harder, especially when he discovers that few people are interested in the truth.
The book reminded me of 2666, but the crucial difference between the two is that things actually happen in Red April.

(Farm Lane Books Blog)
 

El crítico literario Santos Sanz Villanueva sigue el rastro de la novela española durante el franquismo en un nuevo libro, en el que refleja hasta qué punto la literatura padeció "las consecuencias de una situación anómala". (...)
Dentro del canon, decía el autor, "hay nombres que se repiten siempre", como los de Miguel Delibes, Camilo José Cela, Carmen Laforet, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Juan Goytisolo, José Manuel Caballero Bonald, Luis Mateo Díez y Eduardo Mendoza. (...)
Durante el franquismo, "la peripecia básica de la narrativa consistió en asentar el derecho de la novela a desprenderse de agobios y opresiones", pero la anormalidad que se respiraba en los diferentes ámbitos de la vida española influyó de lleno en la narrativa, que tuvo que pagar "numerosos peajes".
Proliferaron los relatos belicistas e historias protagonizadas por "abnegados falangistas" y hubo también "unas pocas novelas de caballerías. Franco y la Falange se reencarnaban en los nuevos amadises", señaló el autor, colaborador habitual del diario EL MUNDO y de EL CULTURAL.
Escritores como Baroja, Azorín, Matute, Benet, Ignacio Aldecoa, Delibes, Jesús Fernández Santos, García Hortelano, los hermanos Juan y Luis Goytisolo, Alfonso Grosso y Torrente Ballester son algunos de los que desfilan por este libro, en el que tampoco faltan autores que empezaron a escribir en los últimos años del franquismo como Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Eduardo Mendoza o Javier Marías.

(Ana Mendoza)