With Borges by Alberto Manguel

An excerpt of Alberto Manguel's "With Borges" can be found here.

La Malinche by Laura Esquivel

Another review of Esquivel's "La Malinche".

The Spanish encounter with Mexico was many things, but "confusing"? I'm tempted to blame the translator for some of the novel's more unfortunate moments, such as Malinalli's realization that "she was tired, extremely tired of Cortés and all his strategies." But the problem surely goes deeper than diction in whatever language. For instance, in an early scene when the hirsute Spaniard "takes" Malinalli for the first time -- on a riverbank, no less -- Esquivel tells us that the pair "looked into each other's eyes and found their destiny and their inevitable union." Are those literary terms for rape?

In its treatment of plot (sketchy) and character (sketchier) and its emphasis on wifty spirituality, Malinche feels half thought out, its heroine an excuse for the author to indulge her meditations on pre-Columbian (or pre-Cortésian) folkways. Esquivel hints that Malinalli is a kind of Virgin of Guadalupe, a figure in whom the blood of warring races mingles together, the mother of the Mexico that will be born out of the clash of cultures. That's a fascinating idea, but in this book it's only an idea. The more Malinalli retreats from history into spirituality, the more she melds into the universe and the vaguer she becomes as a character -- until she's lost entirely in the mists of myth. From conquistador's mouthpiece to author's is not a fate anyone should suffer.

You can find the review here

Captain Alatriste

Captain Alatriste is poised to become fiction's hottest international swashbuckler since the Scarlet Pimpernel. Already a cult hero in Spain, Alatriste is the star of five novels by former journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte that have sold more than 4 million copies in 50 countries since the first volume appeared a decade ago. That book, Captain Alatriste, was finally published in English last year, and the second, Purity of Blood, came out in January. The captain has his own website, comic strip, board games and, in Madrid, guided tours of his fictional haunts. Alatriste, a feature film based largely on the first book and starring Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings), will open in Europe and the U.S. later this year. With a $28 million budget, it's the most expensive Spanish-language film ever made in Spain.

The protagonist of this franchise is perhaps the least dashing, most enigmatic hero ever to rattle a rapier. Alatriste speaks little, drinks alone, dresses badly and blunders into traps set by more cunning adversaries. But he is fearless, deadly with a blade and, beneath his armored persona, stubbornly loyal. Those qualities animate the newly translated Purity of Blood. Alatriste is hired to help an aging father free his daughter, a nun, from the clutches of a well-connected priest who is using the convent as his private seraglio. The old man and his family have a secret: as Christian descendants of a converted Jew in anti-Semitic times, they lack "purity of blood" and soon become targets of the Inquisition. Alatriste too comes under suspicion, and the blood, pure and otherwise, begins to flow.

You can find the article here

The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes

Sex, politics, Mexico and the enigmas of identity are the themes that have preoccupied — even, at times, obsessed — Carlos Fuentes for his entire writing life, and he brings them together once again, in full regalia, in his smashing new novel, "The Eagle's Throne." Here, though, they feel less like obsessions than like old friends, the trusted longtime companions of the novelist's working days. By now, they're so familiar to Fuentes, and to one another, that they mingle freely, casually, almost flirtatiously. Fuentes has gathered them all in one place many times before, usually for grave, summit-level meetings in ambitious novels like "The Death of Artemio Cruz," "The Old Gringo" and "The Years With Laura Díaz." This is the first time he's thrown them a party.

Which is not to say that "The Eagle's Throne" is unambitious. Fuentes doesn't put finger to keyboard without having at least one fairly large idea to get off his chest, and over the years he has managed to store up more than a couple of big ones about the subject he addresses here: the exercise of practical politics.


You can find the review here

The Tango Singer by Tomas Eloy Martinez

In his new novel, "The Tango Singer," Tomás Eloy Martínez ("The Péron Novel"), who was short-listed for the International Man Booker Prize, explores themes not unlike those found in tango music.

Bruno Cadogan, a New York academic, is writing a dissertation on the origins of tango. He hears of an extraordinary tango singer in Buenos Aires named Julio Martel, who is believed to be even more talented than the legendary Carlos Gardel, and journeys there to seek him out.

The year is 2001 and Argentina is undergoing an economic upheaval. Citizens have taken to the streets to protest unemployment. Crimes and betrayals are common. And Buenos Aires, once a majestic city compared to Paris and Madrid, has taken on a shabby appearance.

You can find the review here

Interview with Eduardo Galeano

Born in Uruguay in 1940, Eduardo Galeano began writing newspaper articles as a teenager. Though his dream was to become a soccer player, by the age of 20 he became Editor-in-Chief of LaMarcha. A few years later, he took the top post at Montevideo’s daily newspaper Epocha. At 31, Galeano wrote his most famous book, “The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.”

After the 1973 military coup in Uruguay, Galeano was imprisoned and forced to leave the country. He settled in Argentina where he founded and edited a cultural magazine, Crisis. After the 1976 military coup there, Galeano’s name was added to the lists of those condemned by the death squads. He moved to Spain where he began his classic work “Memory of Fire,” a three-volume narrative of the history of America, North and South. He eventually returned home to his native Uruguay where he now lives. His latest book is called “Voices of Time: A Life in Stories.” Eduado Galeano joins us today in our firehouse studio.

You can find the interview here

The Eagle's Throne by Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes has looked into the future of Mexico and seen a maelstrom of secrets that pulls in the entire political elite. Then, as if this apocalyptic vision weren't dark enough, he's found there can be no escape, no end to intrigue, plotting or murder for the crass and conniving bunch of Machiavellians reaching for the prized spot: "The Eagle's Throne."

Here, then, is a novel of pure (at its worst) politics, Fuentes readily agreed in a recent interview, but despite the steady march in his writing toward hard-hitting political realism he denies that he's calling for reform in Mexico or anywhere else. "I'm writing fiction, with all the freedom on the world," he said. "I'm not preaching to anybody, saying do this or do that. People can draw conclusions, moral or political, from reading the novel, but it is not my purpose to put on a Hyde Park speech." Instead, he wants the reader to sit back and enjoy the crazy roller-coaster ride that the Mexican presidency has in store for all those who get on and expect to survive.

The Eagle's Throne is the summit of power in Mexico. It's January 2020, Washington is angry with Mexico for demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Colombia and for backing the high oil prices set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and so with the flip of a switch, off goes the telecommunications network of its southern neighbor. The president of Mexico, Lorenzo Terán, three years into his reign, has suddenly sent Mexico down a path of resistance to the dictates of the United States.

Fuentes, the ever-sharper social critic, arrives naturally at the "The Eagle's Throne" to claim that politics is no less than the "public expression of private passions," as two of his sleep-your-way- to-power female politicos separately intone. And things private get quickly heated in this novel, once the power is off, as one of these kingmakers, María Rosario Galván, offers not only her connections but her desirable body as the ultimate prize to the young bureaucrat Nicolás Valdivia if he successfully makes the climb to the presidency with her help. But lies and secrets are the money of her trade, and she has no intention of seeing on the throne anyone other than her longtime friend and ex- lover, Bernal Herrera, the interior secretary, with whom she has had a child with Down's syndrome who is conveniently stored in a state institution.

From "The Crystal Frontier" (1997), which revealed the dark underside of life along the U.S.-Mexico border, to "Contra Bush" (2004), searing essays on the current U.S. administration, and another tome of essays about his views, "This I Believe" (2005), Fuentes has been landing his pen ever harder. His many other novels, including "The Old Gringo," "The Death of Artemio Cruz" and "The Years With Laura Díaz," have never shied from the base factor that guides all strivings: politics.

You can find the full review here

Malinche by Laura Esquivel

In the early 1990s, Laura Esquivel set the tone for a highly respected career with her first book, "Like Water for Chocolate," a supernatural tale that displayed Esquivel's knowledge and familiarity with her native Mexico and established her comfort level with magical realism. Her new book, "Malinche," doesn't stray from either of those expressions.

A historical novel that details the tragic relationship between Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and his translator Mallinalli, "Malinche" (a name by which Mallinalli was also known) is a lyrical interpretation of the timeline that follows the destruction of Montezuma's 16th-century empire by Cortes.


You can find the review here

Seeing by Jose Saramago

To read José Saramago is to explore the frontiers of human nature. In his novels we encounter unthinkable evil and unspeakable goodness, baffling incompetence and stunning persistence, deep despair and unbounded hope. In ''Seeing," his heartwarming and heartbreaking new novel, Saramago revives his technique of tossing an allegorical dilemma at a group of people, then sifting through the chaos for the best nuggets of being.

In his 11th work of fiction, the 83-year-old Portuguese Nobel laureate guides us again to the city where, in his 1995 novel ''Blindness," every citizen went blind but one. ''Blindness" describes an ineffectual government-ordered quarantine and a city that falls into a bloody, animalistic melee. Its seeing heroine, referred to only as ''the doctor's wife," guides six companions to safety with courage.

The story in ''Seeing" is not as horrifying as its predecessor's. Its crisis is political. During the capital city's elections, four years after the blindness epidemic, 83 percent of the ballots cast are blank. The government, flabbergasted and embarrassed, places the city under siege and relocates, sure that chaos will ensue and teach the ''subversives" a lesson. But the freed masses live on in peace, despite the government's rhetorical and physical efforts to incite turmoil. When officials receive a letter revealing a long-kept secret of the doctor's wife and suggesting that she might be behind the blank-vote movement, they seize on her as a suspect and send in a police superintendent to investigate. Their relentless certainty of her guilt ignites yet another underground movement to prove her innocence.

You can find the review here

Seeing by Jose Saramago

Sometimes a novel comes along that is terrifying only because the reader can't decide why he should be scared. Jose Saramago's latest political allegory Seeing is just such a tale.

The Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate has again produced a singular work of dark humour and near absurdity, one raising disturbing questions about the nature of democracy and the relationship between the government and the governed.

Taking place four years after the events in his novel Blindness, Saramago's Seeing opens on a rainy election day in the unnamed capital of an unnamed country.

The voting turns out badly for the incumbent party. Although it wins the elections, more than 70 per cent of the ballots cast are blank. After a second round of elections produces more than 80 per cent blanks, the government declares a state of emergency.

You can find the review here

Seeing by Jose Saramago

Seeing is typical of Saramago’s recent fiction. The setting is deliberately vague (there are occasional hints that he has Portugal in mind), and not even the characters have distinct names. As in Blindness, The Double, The Cave and All the Names, Saramago has shunned realism to create a parable for our times.

In form, also, Seeing bears the novelist’s characteristic imprint: paragraphs running uninterrupted for pages, rambling and loosely punctuated sentences brimming with sub-clauses and digressions, no indicators of speech. It is a style that takes some getting used to, and that may defeat readers not willing to let themselves be carried away by the prose’s elliptical, almost oral rhythm. Saramago’s fiction cannot be easy to render into English, yet Margaret Jull Costa (awarded the Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of All the Names) has once again done a remarkable job of making a verbose and convoluted text clear, precise and readable.

This moral fable, however, suffers by comparison to its predecessor. Whereas Blindness was compelling in its exploration of individual characters, and of the compassion and solidarity that can emerge from the depths of despair, Seeing feels like an over-long and ponderous attempt to ridicule the political system we deposit such faith in. Saramago’s novels have always been tinged by his political inclinations (he remains a card-carrying member of the Communist party), but his provocative swipe at electoral democracy does not quite take flight as a story. His characters are barely sketched in. It is hard to care much about them.

Saramago’s politicians are inept, paranoid or power-hungry caricatures for whom the preservation of status quo has become an end in itself: "Appoint a commission of inquiry at once, minister, To reach what conclusions, prime minister, Just set it to work, we’ll sort that out later."

His honest everymen, on the other hand, are heroic in their rectitude, and in their myriad acts of resistance to illegitimate authority. But, unlike the protagonists of Blindness, those of Seeing lack that essential ingredient of successful drama - moral ambiguity.

Saramago’s latest commentary about man in a state of nature may be worthy as political rhetoric, but it is decidedly disappointing as fiction.

You can find the review here

La Malinche by Laura Esquivel

The cover for Malinche describes the historical novel as a tale about the "tragic and passionate love affair" of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and his translator. The story is a lyrical interpretation of the timeline that follows the destruction of Montezuma’s 16th-century Mexicas empire by Cortes. Mallinalli, also called Malinche in the book, was sold into slavery as a child and later became Cortes’ interpreter.

But the term love affair should be accepted lightly.

Yes, Cortes and Mallinalli share an intimate relationship that leads to the birth of a child and lends itself to vibrantly written scenes by Esquivel. Their first encounter, a mere exchange between their eyes with no words, is depicted with vivid passion.

But to call their relationship - which frequently included Cortes being just as forceful with Mallinalli as he was in war - one of love is extreme. Still, the relationship between Cortes and Mallinalli, a woman who has often been deemed a traitor in Mexican history, is a good launching pad for a novel.

The problem, however, comes when Esquivel tries to pack too much information into just a few pages. The novel gets clouded with Esquivel’s heavy use of magical realism and her need to explain every innermost thought of her characters. This leads to superfluous paragraphs that take characters into back story and memories. The result is a sometimes disjointed narrative.

But all these things may seem like gravy to Esquivel’s loyal fans, because overall she sticks to her pattern of richly imagined detail. Readers who like her style will devour every word. Those who do not may get lost.

Esquivel does do a nice job of showing a sympathetic side to Mallinalli that may reveal that she was an innocent trapped in Cortes’ power-hungry world instead of a traitor. Esquivel’s development of Mallinalli’s character is strong.

With Malinche, Esquivel remains true to her magical realism ways. So, loyalists will be delighted; others should move on.


You can find the review here