Latin american writers and books

To many good writers and books to choose!

Tell one you like!

Jorge Luis Borges!!!!!

Wonderful poems and stories....if you have not read him - you are in for a wonderful journey.

Jorge Luis Borges - I remember having "la rosa profunda" and "asesinos de papel" books at home!

Luis Sepúlveda - The Old Man who Read Love
Stories. Delightful!

Borges is my favorite latin american writer. The best short stories I've ever read as well as poems. A novel that I'd judge a must not only within the boundaries of latin american literature but as universal literature is Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar... just unforgettable.

Damn - sorry Rodbogey! Had hoped Fbaezer and Craven - as well as some of our other savvy about such things folk would be along!

I am aware that there is a fantastic explosion of literature from there - but I am woefully ignorant about it.

Still hoping...

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

"The story follows 100 years in the life of Macondo, a village founded by José Arcadio Buendía and occupied by descendants all sporting variations on their progenitor's name: his sons, José Arcadio and Aureliano, and grandsons, Aureliano José, Aureliano Segundo, and José Arcadio Segundo. Then there are the women--the two Úrsulas, a handful of Remedios, Fernanda, and Pilar--who struggle to remain grounded even as their menfolk build castles in the air. If it is possible for a novel to be highly comic and deeply tragic at the same time, then One Hundred Years of Solitude does the trick. Civil war rages throughout, hearts break, dreams shatter, and lives are lost, yet the effect is literary pentimento, with sorrow's outlines bleeding through the vibrant colors of García Márquez's magical realism. Consider, for example, the ghost of Prudencio Aguilar, whom José Arcadio Buendía has killed in a fight. So lonely is the man's shade that it haunts Buendía's house, searching anxiously for water with which to clean its wound. Buendía's wife, Úrsula, is so moved that "the next time she saw the dead man uncovering the pots on the stove she understood what he was looking for, and from then on she placed water jugs all about the house.""

The foregoing filching from Amazon dotcom is rather more descriptive than anything from the gamut of my own synopses, i.e., "fun read" to "great book".

(called upon by dlowan)

The universe of Latin American literature is vast. I'll skip poetry, for now, and limit myself to the XX Century.

The most important (IMHO) authors, by country:

Argentina. Masters of hypertextuality.

Jorge Luis Borges. He's a classic and his works will survive for ages. The cleanest writing style expressing the most baroque worlds within the world. Ficciones, El Aleph, Otras Inquisiciones, El Libro de Arena, Siete Noches, Historia Universal de la Infamia are among my favorite Borges books.

Julio Cortázar, the gigantic cronopio. He marked at least two generations with his capacity for innovation in literature and his life-loving philosophy. Like Borges, he's a master of the hypertext. My favorites: Rayuela, La Vuelta al Día en 80 Mundos, Historias de Cronopios y de Famas, Ultimo Round, Todos los Fuegos el Fuego, Los Autonautas de la Cosmopista.

Adolfo Bioy Casares. Another master. Borges said he had written the perfect story. It is the perfect long short-story: La Invención de Morel, a deep ontological drama, a love story, the classic text of Latin American science fiction classic.

Chile,magic realism and politics

José Donoso. By far the most influential prose writer, the inventor of the Latin American "boom". If you read Isabel Allende, please notice that it is mostly a minor rip-off of Donoso's themes and style. My favorite Donoso: Este Domingo, Coronación, Tres Novelitas Burguesas. I confess I haven't read his most famous novel: El Obsceno Pájaro de la Noche.

Poli Délano and Antonio Skármeta are also good, but minor Chilean writers, both quite a lot into politics. Délano's En Este Lugar Sagrado is quite an achievement. A man is locked in a movie theatre bathroom and recalls his life while waiting to be released. But he went to the movies on September 10, 1973, the day before Pinochet's coup d'Etat: he'll have to wait longer than expected and find a different country. Skármeta's El Cartero de Neruda is the source of the famous film "Il Postino".

Colombia, AKA Macondo

Gabriel García Márquez. Magical realism would have the good world press it has, were it not for Gabo. He's so widely known I can add very little, only that my favorite García Márquez is, on the order: Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada, Cien Años de Soledad, La Increíble y Triste Historia de la Cándida Eréndira y su Abuela Desalmada, El Coronel no Tiene Quien le Escriba, Siete Cuentos Peregrinos. I would put Relato de un Naúfrago, a journalistic chronicle, between "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Cándida Eréndira".

Alvaro Mutis is also quite reknown, but I'm sorry to say I have not read any of his works.

Cuba, Masters of Baroque.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante . Recently dead. His trend setting novel Tres Tristes Tigres is one of funniest -and hardest to translate- works in Hispanic literature. Cubans are famous because they never shut up and always play with words; Cabrera Infante is an absolute master in this task. While reading "Tres Tigres Tigres" I found myself often ROTFL. From "Lenin Riefenstahlin", to his cariscaturesque rendering of the assasination of Trotsky, according to different Cuban writers. Other great books of him are: Pavana para un Infante Difunto, En el Gran Ecbó. If any of you saw the American film "Vanishing Point", he wrote the screenplay.

Alejo Carpentier . Another great baroque writer. His novels have the appeal for inmortal themes: El Siglo de las Luces, Concierto Barroco, El Recurso del Método.

José Lezama Lima. Baroque among the baroque, a maid can cite "Hecuba, the bitch", while another character is "so affeminate and preraphaelite, even his citations have painted nails". His terrific novel, Paradiso, is not for all tastes (language is really the main character).

Severo Sarduy. He managed somehow to be more baroque than Lezama. And waaay more decadent. His main novel Cobra is quite hallucinating (the story of a transsexual who wants to be Greta Garbo). I think his best book is "Escrito Sobre un Cuerpo", a series of very bright essays (for example, he says that Lezama's style was directed by his asthmatic breathing).

(I threaten to come back later with Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay & Venezuela)

-edited for bolds

I have long been a fan of Brazilian literature. J.M. Machado de Assis' "Posthumas Reminiscences of Bras Cubas" , and "Philosopher or Dog" are masterworks, which deserve far more critical acclaim than they have achieved. I am also a fan of the rather more popular George Amado - particularly his "Gabriella", but also "The Violent Land"..

well if I start to write about Latin American literature I will never stop.
So I will just say that you can put me to deserted island without anything except loads of books by Latin American authors and I'll be happy

btw, fbaezer, I almost started a fight with you for not mentioning Llosa, I only later realized you are going country by country

george, I wish I knew more about Brazilian literature.

I know Amado from movies.
Machado de Assis from "The Man who Spoke Javanese", quite funny.
I've tried to read "Grande Sertao, Veredas", by Joao Guimaraes Rosa, supposedly the most important novel in Brazilian literature, but I can't get it (it happened to me with Joyce's "Ulysses", too).

One important Brazilian writer I admire is Rubem Fonseca. His stories, mostly about urban violence, are gripping.

Back to Hispanic Literature:

Ecuador

Demetrio Aguilera Malta has an interesting magic realism novel: Siete Lunas y Siete Serpientes.

Guatemala

Miguel Angel Asturias, this Nobel Prize winner was the first one, not necessarily the best one, to write a "dictator novel": El Señor Presidente. I also read El Papa Verde, a good social novel and he's also known for Hombres de Maíz. Both books are about social exploitation of the Maya.

Augusto Monterroso , great story writer. La Oveja Negra and Obras Completas are his most famous story collections ("Complete Works" is the title of a short story).
He has written the best known shortest story in Spanish, El Dinosaurio: "When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there".


Paraguay

Augusto Roa Bastos, one of the great social writers of Latin American literature. Yo, el Supremo ranks among the best dictator novels and the very political short story "El Trueno Sobre las Hojas" is overwhelming.

Peru

Mario Vargas Llosa. Surely one of the most gifted and crafty writers of the continent. Lots of people in Latin America hate him because of his active conservative political stand and his derisive description of our societies, but he's IMHO, the best living Latin American novelist (in other words, better than García Márquez). The derisive opinion, when expressed in his literature, is often acute and sadly true. Not all of his works are masterpieces, but many are: La Guerra del Fin del Mundo, La Fiesta del Chivo, La Ciudad y los Perros, La Casa Verde, Conversación en La Catedral rank that high, IMO. Pantaleón y las Visitadoras is funny, Los Cachorros is moving, Los Jefes tells you about a great writer in the making, Historia de Maita has some great moments.
I believe that the Swede chairman who reads Spanish has some political views that will leave Vargas Llosa unjustifiably out of the Nobel Prize. He'll share that distinction with Borges.

José María Arguedas is perhaps the best writer about the situation of Indians in Latin America. His novel Los Ríos Profundos is extremely poetic, and with a strong social gist. Arguedas wrote from the inside of Quechuan communities, without ever falling into the "reversed racism" of some Latin American indigenism. Great, great novel.

Uruguay

Horacio Quiroga, simple and deep storyteller. He wrote Cuentos de Amor de Locura y de Muerte and Cuentos de la Selva , which I consider, by far, the best children book of Latin American literature.

Uruguay also boasts Juan Carlos Onetti, but I've never read his works and Mario Benedetti, whose corny writings (left wing with sugar candy coating) I personally despise.

Venezuela

Rómulo Gallegos, writer, diplomat, president of Venezuela. A realist writer, his most famous novel, Doña Bárbara, tells the struggle between wild nature, reppresented by the agrresive woman Doña Bárbara, and civilized rule of law, reppresented by her antagonist, Santos Luzardo.

I think I'll leave Mexico for another take.

fbaezer,

I believe you would truly enjoy "Posthumas Reminiscences of Bras Cubas". it is a fairly short novel, unusual in construction, and one that combines irony and lyrical sensitivity in a remarkable (and characteristically Brasilian) way. Machado was the son of slaves and the first Presaident of the Brasilian Academy of letters. The piece was written in the 1880s, but appears quite modern in tone - a wonderful read..

<Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico como saudosa lembrança estas Memórias Póstumas>
Machado de Assis.

Thanks Francis. "... saudosa lembranca..." Wonderful.

Fbaezer came!!!!!!!!!!

Have you been in Brazil, georgeob1?

I will agree with you about Llosa fbaezer Although "Hundred years of solitude" remains my favourite book, in general terms I would say Llosa is the best living (and maybe not just "living") Latin American author.

Yes many times. I have travelled from Fortaleza to Rio Grande del Sul and from sao Paulo to Riberao Preto and Belo Horizonte. I find Brasil a fascinating place, although Sao Paulo in particular has grown from a large, exciting city into huge, unbridled chaos. My Portuguese isn't what it once was, but I have found the literature to offer many treasures, often little known outside the country. Brasilian music, particularly their variety of jazz has finally gotten the recognition it has long deserved.

Damn, I took away 5 of García Marquez' Doce Cuentos Peregrinos and also forgot another of his great novels: El Amor en los Tiempos del Cólera.

I'll be back, with Mexican literature, when I have the time for a long post.