Best books of 2007

The Washington Post's best books of 2007 list includes seven Spanish and Latin American authors.

The Bad Girl, by Mario Vargas Llosa; translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (FSG). Irresistibly entertaining and, like all of its author's work, formidably smart. - Jonathan Yardley

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot DIaz (Riverhead). Oscar clearly is not intended to function as a hero in the classical sense. Geek swagger, baby. Get used to it. - Jabari Asim

Delirium, by Laura Restrepo; translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer (Nan A. Talese). A book-and-a-half: stunning, dense, complex, mind-blowing. The setting is Bogota, Colombia. Far above politics, right up into high art. - Carolyn See

In Her Absence, by Antonio Munoz Molina; translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (Other). This elegant, precise and inimitable novel focuses intensely on a civil servant and his passionate yet painful relationship with his wife of six years. - Brigitte Weeks

Nada, by Carmen Laforet; translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman (Modern Library). After six decades, it has lost none of its power and originality, and we are fortunate to have it in this fine translation. - JY

Dancing to "Almendra", by Mayra Montero; translated by Edith Grossman (FSG). The fictional, gossamer beauty and blood-soaked brutality that personifies Cuba of 1957. - Joanne Omang

Lost City Radio, by Daniel Alarcon (HarperCollins). Readers will recognize fragments of recent history in Argentina, Chile and, most particularly, Peru. A fable for the entire continent. - Jonathan Yardley

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Latin American Literature

David L. Ulin reviews Laura Restrepo's Delirium.

In her novel "Delirium," the Colombian writer Laura Restrepo attempts to write about madness from the inside and outside all at once. Set primarily in Bogotá, the book operates from a simple premise: A former university professor named Aguilar returns home from a short trip to find that his wife, Agustina, has shrugged off the mantle of her sanity. It's not the first time this has happened; Aguilar now drives a van delivering pet food, a job with hours flexible enough to let him tend to Agustina and her states of mind.

But what has pushed her over the edge this time? Was it an encounter with a lover? Or perhaps some dark flood of memory? As the novel unfolds, Restrepo seeks to take us into the heart of the mystery, moving among four perspectives — Aguilar's account of his wife's breakdown; Agustina's own recollections of growing up in a house defined by silence; an extended monologue by Midas McAlister, Agustina's former lover and a financier for the drug lord Pablo Escobar; and the story of Agustina's grandfather Nicholas, who shared her condition — to develop a sense of context that tells us something about this woman whose life, we learn, is sheathed in lies.

Such a construct has potential, but difficulties arise from the outset, beginning with Restrepo's inability to bring Agustina to life. She is, or so the novel tells us, special, touched with psychic abilities — a kind of healer — but this seems contrived. Rather, she's most memorable as one of those people who drives others crazy: haughty, demanding, mercurial. Wealthy, with a powerful father and deep, if elusive, ties to Colombia's narco-underground, she drifts across the surface of existence, untouched by consequence. Even her madness seems self-indulgent, with no weight, no depth. Read More

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Colombian Literature

Book Review: Delirium by Laura Restrepo

Terrence Rafferty reviews Laura Restrepo's Delirium.

Laura Restrepo writes about Colombia, her native land, but she spends a good deal of her time in Mexico, and to read her latest novel, "Delirium," is to understand why. Most of the action takes place in the Colombian capital, Bogotá — a city, one character says, "where everyone's at war with everyone else" — at a time when the whole country seems either insane or, perhaps worse, in love with insanity and helpless to change. Although Restrepo doesn't specify the year, it appears to be 1983: "E.T." and "Flashdance" are in the movie theaters, Ronald Reagan is president of the United States, and the most powerful man in Colombia is Pablo Escobar, darkly presiding over the vast cocaine empire of Medellín. Escobar "doesn't like being called the King of Coca," though; according to someone who knows him, "he prefers Father of the Nation." And "Delirium" is about his nation of frightened, maddened children, the Colombia he sired.

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Colombian Literature

Book Review: Delirium by Laura Restrepo

Maya Muir reviews Laura Restrepo's Delirium.

Colombian novelist Laura Restrepo's new book, "Delirium," poses as a mystery: Why has Bogota beauty Augustina Londono gone mad, and how did she come to be found delirious in a room at the Wellington Hotel?

The answers unfold within four fractured narratives of three generations of the Londono family and the people around them. Clever revelations, withheld to the final pages, provide answers. But Augustina, the reader discovers, has always been a little unhinged like her grandfather before her, and the mystery adds up to less than the sum of its parts. Also Augustina's delirium simply -- but conveniently -- fades without much reason at the story's end.

The more-interesting delirium Restrepo delineates is the drug-corrupted society of 21st-century Colombia. A character describes Bogota as "this city where everyone's at war with everyone else." Random bombings and kidnappings occur daily; the countryside is punctuated by zones so dangerous that the military withdraws by midafternoon each day; and the social elite have become eager puppets of the drug lords.

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Colombian Literature

Book Review: Delirium by Laura Restrepo

Timothy Peters reviews Laura Restrepo's Delirium.

The word "delirium," the title of Colombian writer Laura Restrepo's new novel (her sixth to be translated into English), comes from the Latin delirare, to be deranged, and it describes the state of Agustina, the book's central figure. The story opens when her lover, Aguilar, discovers her in a strange hotel room in Bogotá, suffering from some kind of psychotic break, "transformed into someone terrified and terrifying, a being I barely recognized." He later adds that her eyes "filled me with fear, something disturbing, an excessive vibration that brought to mind the word delirium." It's a powerful start to this compelling, often beautiful novel, which won Spain's Alfaguara Prize in 2004 and has been widely and effusively praised by the likes of José Saramago and Gabriel García Márquez.

The story seems at first to be about the search for the transformative event that destroyed Agustina's mind. But as the novel develops, it's clear that Aguilar should not have been surprised by her mental deterioration. Agustina, a woman from the upper echelons of the deeply hierarchical strata of Bogotán society, has suffered from delusional behavior since childhood. She has long believed she can foretell the future, and she believes she can cure her ills through obsessive rituals of cleansing.

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Colombian Literature

Interview with Laura Restrepo

I had never conducted an interview via e-mail before my conversation with the Colombian author Laura Restrepo; therefore, I wasn't prepared to get answers that had the quality of polished writing. Because Restrepo's answers are lengthy and rich in anecdote, I missed not being able to interject whenever she wrote about a subject that I wanted to know more about. That's perhaps the main reason why the resulting interview reads, I think, like a memoir—an evocative recreating of Restrepo's fascinating life. What I hope also comes across in Restrepo's responses is that she has been creating, slowly and deliberately, a remarkably consistent body of work that reflects her singular preoccupations with politics and history. Although relatively unknown in the United States, she will be better known and appreciated as more of her books begin to appear, and the magnitude of what she has achieved becomes clear to all. It is Restrepo's ferocity of vision, her love of language, of storytelling and of innovation, that have made her one of the most accomplished writers to emerge from Latin America since the glorious and distant days of the "boom."

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Colombian Literature

Alfaguara Prize 2007 Jury

Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa will preside to the jury of the 10th edition of the Alfaguara Prize 2007. Like in previous editions, the composition of the rest of the jury will not become public until the award is announced.
From his first edition in 1998, outstanding writers have presided over the Jury of the Alfaguara Prize: Carlos Fuentes, Eduardo Mendoza, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Jorge Semprún, Luis Mateo Ten, Jose Saramago, Manuel Caballero Bonald and Angeles Mastretta.
The Alfaguara Prize is one of the most important literary awards in Spanish language.
Previously awarded authors include, last year's winner Peruvian Santiago Roncagliolo with Abril Rojo, Graciela Montes, Ema Wolf, Laura Restrepo, Xavier Velasco, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Elena Poniatowska, Clara Sánchez, Manuel Vicent.
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Latin American Literature, Spanish Literature