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El reino del que trata este libro de 142 páginas es el del “rey” de Haiti, Henri Christophe, que llegó a su fin en 1820 en la isla de Española. Nacido en Suiza, pero criado en Cuba, el autor probablemente se dio cuenta en su juventud de la historia pesarosa del país vecino. Así es que nos asegura en la introducción, que en 1943 tuvo “la suerte” de hacer una visita a Haití donde encontró “las ruinas, tan poéticas de Sans Souci, la mole imponente” que legó Christophe a sus desharrapados compatriotas, refiriéndose al edificio colosal y masivo que sus vasallos tuvieron que erigir y que trae turistas hasta hoy en día. Considerado como uno de los más destacados escritores de América Latina del siglo XX, Carpintier hace un lado su estilo magistral rebuscado, el que resalta en la introducción, pero, menos mal, no lo extiende al texto propio de la novela, y se ajusta al nivel de un esclavo negro llamado Ti Noël cuya suerte nos revela el mundo del rey Christophe. A través de su precaria existencia el lector descubre, sin tener que aguantar términos pedantescos, de la manera en que Christophe ejerció su despotismo sobre sus súbditos desheredados, opresión que debió desaparecer después de las insignes luchas por la igualdad libradas por el célebre Toussaint L’Overture cuyo nombre curiosamente no aparece en este libro.

(Barcelona, Austral/Destino, 2009) Delibes ha sido galardonado con varios premios españoles y, basado en esta novela considerada como su mejor trabajo, pienso que dichos reconocimientos están en lo correcto. Descubrí que Delibes fue un excelente escritor y conocedor de su país (murió en 2010). El Camino trata de la vida de tres chicos, naturales de a una aldea española en los años cuarenta del siglo veinte (descubrí un fragmento que hace alusión a la guerra civil). Esta se desenvuelve tan plácidamente que me pareció, al principio, como un hilo de retratos pueblerinos triviales. Pero pronto me di cuenta de la forma en que dichas efemérides encerraban reflexiones profundas. Es más, hallé que Delibes manejó su trabajo escrito con una maestría impresionante revelando un detallado conocimiento de la vida de los vecinos, tales como el herrero, el señor cura, el quesero, el sin dios, las “guindillas” y las “lepóridas,” y otros. Pero mas que nada, Delibe protagoniza a los tres amiguitos, Daniel, el Mochuelo, Roque el Moñigo, Germán el Tiñoso, y sigue sus picardías y pillerías, las que corren el velo a las relaciones entre los adultos del pueblo. El Camino pertenece al género de cuentos protagonizados en el mundo de literatura inglés por los Hardy Boys, pero ostentando mayor profundidad literaria. Su estilo es sencillo pero firme. Fue una grata lectura. [October 2019]

Brenner is a Professor of History at the University of Munich and his “short” history offers a survey of what seems to be all the significant chapters in Jewish history, from the 10th century BCE to the first years of our 21st century. As a novice in Jewish history I found Brenner’s synthesis extremely helpful, compelling and vital to our time, regardless of the broad sweep. Despite my being a history buff, I lacked an understanding of the Jewish diasporas, especially the early ones. Brenner’s work was of great help to me on this score. Perhaps the most important discovery for me was to learn of the significant diversity in the Jewish people, owing mostly to their peripatetic history, understandably so. I was also looking for the initial issues that triggered early Christians against the Jews and I found some, expecting more, perhaps mistakenly in this kind of text. I also read with much interest about the rise of an educated professional class of Jews in western Europe but less so in eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. And, I found Brenner’s treatment of the evolution of the “final solution” for the Jews in the Third Reich impassive yet consequential. He offers a discomforting alternative view to the history of Western Civilization. It is quite unfortunate that most human beings are unaware of this history.

[See English below] De lo que trata este libro es la vida en la jungla de Veracruz en la década de los 1940. Se lee como una memoria, aunque el autor no la identifica como tal. Se me hizo un cuento cautivador desde la primera hasta la última página. El narrador es hijo de un emigrante español que huyó la Guerra Civil Española y se establece en la tórrida selva veracruzana, lejos de la costa. Cada capítulo revela aspectos escogidos de la vida allí, y cada cual es encantador y fantástico al mismo tiempo: la vida con los cocodrilos que acechan en los ríos cercanos e incluso intentan entrar por la puerta de atrás, serpientes, leones y ensordecedores enjambres de insectos. Tormentas exuberantes. En algunos capítulos, el narrador es un niño y en otros es mayor y encargado de la granja cafetalera de su padre. La relación del narrador con sus vecinos y empleados indios ocupa varios capítulos, cada uno de los cuales ofrece un ángulo único con diferentes individuos, uno de ellos su supervisor de granja. Todo se relata en un lenguaje sencillo lo que encontré atrayente porque deja ver sutilezas en las relaciones entre los españoles, tal como el narrador, y los indígenas locales, cada grupo dependiendo del otro para sobrevivir en un entorno hostil. Un circo que visita anualmente un pueblo cercano me pareció como una preciosa evocación en sí misma, relacionada con el cuento del elefante que se escapa de sus dueños y se instala cerca de la finca del narrador. La escena del elefante es igual de graciosa como aquella en la que los negros locales, descendientes de palenques fugitivos en los días coloniales, aparecen repentinamente en la granja y su anciano jefe decide unirse a la familia del narrador para la cena de Navidad, y luego desaparece abruptamente entre la selva cuando termina otro tremendo aguacero. Life in the back jungle of Veracruz in the 1940s is what this book is about. It reads like a memoir, although the author does not identify it as such. I found Usos rudimentarios to be a captivating tale from the first to the last page. The narrator is a son of a Spaniard émigré who fled the Spanish Civil War and settled in the middle of the torrid Veracruzan jungle, away from the coast. Every chapter unveils selected aspects of life there and each is charming and fantastical at the same time: life with the crocodiles lurking in the nearby rivers and even try entering the back door, snakes, lions and the deafening swarms of insects. Exuberant rainstorms. In some chapters the narrator is a boy and in others he is older and has taken over the coffee farm from his father. The narrator’s relationship with his Indian neighbors and employees takes up several chapters, each offering a unique angle with different individuals, one of them his farm overseer. All is told in a simple and unfettered language which I found disarming because it revealed subtleties between the espanoles, like the narrator, and the local indios, each group needing the other in order to survive in a harsh environment. A circus that visits a nearby town annually creates a precious evocation in and of itself, connected to the story of an elephant that escapes its owners and takes up residence near the narrator’s coffee farm. The elephant scene is as fairylike as the one in which local Blacks, descended from runaway palenques in the colonial days, suddenly appear at the farmhouse, their aging chief having decided to join the narrator’s family for Christmas dinner and then abruptly disappears into the jungle after another violent rainstorm.

I read Oz’s obituary recently in which his literary work was described as outstanding. Having an interest in Jewish history I eagerly opened the pages of his memoir/family biography and enjoyed the first chapters quite a lot but less so the ones that followed. The main reason of my growing disappointment is that Oz did, in fact, possess a remarkable ability to describe the minutiae that surrounded him when he was growing up in Lithuania and later in Palestine (Israel) in the mid-1940s, i.e., the landscape, his room, his toys, his family’s garden, his parents and friends, etc., but he does so ad nauseum: lines and lines of adjectival words and phrases that seem to go on needlessly, in my opinion. His writing is also repetitive so that when you get to page 200, he is still relating his memories of when he was 5 like what he had done in his earlier pages. The most important thing I learned was the diversity of Jews in Israel in the 1940’s, not only in terms of where they had emigrated from (Lithuania, Russia, etc.) but also their political view of the world, along with their recognition, in the early 1940’s, of the sinister disappearance of friends and relatives in Nazi occupied territories, losses that slowly turned into a verifiable holocaust. The housing conditions of Oz’s parents and friends in Jerusalem during the war also caught my eye as did his claims that pre-WWII Jew emigres lived like church mice and were largely writers of various kinds including poets, memoirists, historians, analysts of the contemporary scene, etc., whose literary work happened at the end of the day, by candlelight or oil lamp light if necessary.

Here is a prime example of what people used to call pulp fiction: seedy, violent fiction with limited imagination but loaded with technical descriptions of guns, motorcycles, airplanes and other toys that many American men enjoy; NRA devotees probably love pedestrian literature like this. Furthermore, Power and Empire is also a fraud because it is not written by Tom Clancy and so his name should not show as an author; Marc Cameron is the author and he is not as good as Clancy was. Berkeley is a subdivision of Penguin Books and Penguin Books ought to be chastised for participating in a publishing deception like this. The subject matter in Power and Empire is contemporary, involving drug trafficking by Chinese blackguards and CIA-like agents sleuthing against them, saving the world.

The author is new, judging from details included in the Acknowledgements, and so I consider this work a notable and promising effort. While the book cover suggests an African theme, the story is both African and African American. It traces a set of related individuals over several generations, from before the rise of the slave trade in western Africa to Jim Crow America. Given the trans-generational framework, the reader is challenged to remember the characters from the previous periods; I had a difficult time making the connections. I did find the American scenarios most compelling and best fleshed out. I consider the effort praiseworthy although I caution the reader about fellow-author testimonies as I find them misleading at times, and this is one of them.

The White Power Movement, a decidedly racist amalgam of men, remains alive and well, according to this scholarly work, but its threat to the nation and to the average American is not entirely clear. The author, a university professor, helps us understand some basic landmarks in the evolution of the WPM. First are the connections between the Klu Klux Klan and the WPM in the years around World War II and their hellish campaign against Blacks. Secondly, the reader learns of the traitorous identification and fascination of WPM rebels with Nazism and its associated anti-Semitism. Thirdly, and the most important lesson offered by the author, is the role that the Vietnam War played in the formation of disloyal veterans whose leaders declared “war” on the U.S. government, a traitorous act, hence the subtitle of the book, “bring the war home.” WPM leaders disavowed their government fearing it was taking the American people in the wrong direction. These men organized paramilitary teams and thereby posed credible challenges for American law enforcement personnel. Along these lines, the author connects several events, including Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas, to the deadly Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The author affirms a WPM connection, but she also maintains that the FBI and the ATF, primarily, kept the white rebels off balance and against the wall. I have two main observations about this work. One is that while Professor Belew alleges the continuity of a serious racist threat, my reading didn’t find sufficient support for it. The conspiratorial connections are laid down, alright, but the organizational capability of the WPM raises questions, namely that the insurrectionist leaders, as presented in the book, strike me as unsophisticated, back-country rustics squaring off with the U.S. government somewhat blindly. Secondly, while I find the author’s information abundant and well researched, I also find it circuitous and repetitive, a surprise given her prestigious publisher. Nevertheless, Bring the War Home offers a worthwhile gathering of valuable information, including names, and events, for students of racism in America and issues of national, domestic security.

Esta obra de Juan Rulfo se considera como una de las mejores expresiones literarias de México. [SeeEnglishbelow] Siendo yo un hijo de mexicanos, pero nacido en el extranjero, educado fuera de México, mi aprecio de "Pedro Páramo" es algo menos apasionado. Sí reconozco la habilidad literaria de Juan Rulfo, sin duda. Pero, como en el caso de William Faulkner y otros “grandes” escritores de otros países y de otros tiempos, estoy seguro de que el trabajo de estos literatos mereció todo el elogio que les dieron en sus días, en la época que escribieron, pero no necesariamente ahora. El tiempo pasa y muchas cosas cambian también, necesariamente. Yo creo que han surgido otros escritores igual de buenos y quizás mejores, en el caso de México y en Estados Unidos. Pero eso nos lleva a cuestiones de cómo se formulan los cánones nacionales, un detalle que no cabe aquí. Rulfo unge su cuento, la búsqueda del hijo de Pedro Páramo por su padre, con una sensación de magia, de almas etéreas que vagan el mundo con el fin de comunicarse con sus aun vivientes familiares. A consecuencia, Comala, donde vive Pedro Páramo, resulta un pueblo de espíritus. Este es uno de los elementos especiales que esta novela insigne ofrece. Otro es el manejo austero y eficaz del español, en que no hay palabras que sobren, ni que falten (hay escritores que derraman palabras como una hemorragia) al mismo tiempo que Rulfo remeda el hablar lugareño. Estos aspectos lanzaron a Juan Rulfo a las altas esferas literarias a mediados de la década de 1950, gracias más a esta obra que su colección de cuentos, "El llano en llamas." Consecuentemente, "Pedro Páramo" merece ser leído. [October 2018] --- This work by Juan Rulfo is considered one of the best literary expressions in Mexico. Being a son of Mexican immigrants and born and educated in the U.S., I’m less excited about "Pedro Páramo," however, I do recognize Rulfo’s literary ability. But, as with William Faulkner and other “great” writers in other countries and times, I am sure that their work deserved all of the encomiums they received in their day, but not necessarily today. Times passes and so do other things, necessarily. I think other writers have arisen as good or better, in Mexico’s case and in the United States’ too. This comment however leads us into questions about now national canons are formed, a topic that does not fit here. Rulfo anoints his story about Pedro Páramo’s son searching for his father, with a sense of magic, of ghostly souls that roam the world in order to communicate with their still living relatives. As a result, Comala, where Pedro Páramo lives, appears as a town of spirits. This is one of the elements this prominent novel offers, perhaps as an early Mexican version of magical realism. Another is the austere and effective handling of Spanish where every word counts (there are writers who shed words like a hemorrhage) even as Rulfo skillfully mimics the local vernacular. These aspects launched Juan Rulfo into the upper spheres of literary Mexico in the mid-1950s, more so than his short story collection, "El llano en llamas." For these reasons "Pedro Páramo" deserves to be read, no doubt about it.

This short novel, only 109 delicious pages long, feels more like a biographic fragment than a work of fiction. Even so, we don’t have steamy hot, tropical, bawdy house scenes that might stir our more salacious thoughts. What we do have is the tale of a “dirty ol’” bachelor who lives alone in a back country tropical riverside town typical of Garcia-Marquez, and that he falls in love with a young prostitute. Not having fallen in love before, the life of this decrepit eighty-year-old man turns upside down giving the author the opportunity to spin an amusing and intimate tale of a relationship constrained on all sides. One of the most enjoyable scenes describes this senile man sleeping next to his adorable girl as if they were brother and sister, he being unable to do much more. Memories also gave me the opportunity to appreciate the author’s ability to use the Spanish language with sublime skill (I didn’t read the English version). He conjures phrases and expressions that give this touching human story a luxurious linguistic packaging. It was one of his last works. This book is pleasant and touching at the same time. --- Esta novelita de 109 páginas deliciosas me suena más como un trozo biográfico que una obra de ficción. Es más, no tenemos aquí un holgorio ardiente de visitas a prostíbulos tropicales que nos exciten nuestros pensamientos lascivos. Lo que si tenemos es una crónica de un “viejo verde” solterón que vive solo en un pueblo provinciano ribereño, se podría decir, de ensueño, al estilo garciamarqueño, y que se enamora de una joven prostituta. No habiéndose enamorado antes, la vida de este achacoso ochentón salta para caer boca abajo, lo que permite al autor ofrecernos un relato intimo y gracioso de lo que llega a ser una relación amorosa marcada con grandes limitaciones. Una de las escenas más divertidas nos permite imaginar a este hombre chocho gozando solo con poder acostarse al lado de la muchacha que adora toda la noche como si fueran hermanos. No pudo más. La obra también permite apreciar la habilidad de don Gabi para esgrimir el español con una sublime pericia que le confiere a sus frases y expresiones un lujo lingüístico que arropa su fábula humana. Fue una de sus últimas obras. Es divertido este librito y acogedor a la vez.

With good reason, Hillbilly Elegy received widespread attention when it was first published. Put on the market by Harper in 2016, it coincided with the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and his getting elected soon thereafter. His popularity was attributed to his being able to speak on behalf of poor white Americans, especially those from the south who had supposedly been neglected by Democratic administrations. To my knowledge, Mr. Trump did not use the term, “hillbilly” to refer to his loyal supporters but Vance identifies hillbilly people as Trump supporters. Understanding them came to mean also understanding Trump’s inveterate supporters. In any case, this book offers a penetrating insight into the people who live in Appalachia, mostly under-privileged whites who allegedly claim Scot-Irish descendence, a cultural note discussed far too briefly. The author writes his book in a compelling and disarming manner, boldly revealing personal family information, sometimes in a startling way. This combination helped give Hillbilly Elegy considerable attention. The author tells us that he grew up, surrounded by his extended family, in one of the many hollows (“hollers”) scoured into the Alleghany Mountains near Jackson, Kentucky, and so his book puts a spot light on his mountain people, a harsh light. Many of them manifest varying levels of paranoia, to tell the truth. His grandfather’s obsession with guns and a willingness to draw one from behind his back at the slightest threat, his grandmother’s use of foul language and his mother’s abuse of drugs and her chronic inability to keep a husband or boyfriend are examples of this neurotic-paranoiac behavior. In addition, many of the author’s relatives and friends are described as “welfare queens,” some who “drive a Cadillac,” allergic to holding a job, and hostile to the world outside, interest in politics being unquestionably peripheral. I concluded that a large part of the behavior described in Hillbilly is reminiscent of many poor families, working class and non-working, including Mexican American families and other minority families of color in the United States. Hillbilly thus confirmed in my mind that skin color and cultural antecedence are only casual differences among underprivileged people and they all feel put upon by the people who do not live on the edge. Except for a handful of words, here and there, the author does not make these cross-cultural observations. Another parallel with minority families is that Mamaw, the author’s grandmother, was able to recognize a gem in the rough, despite her educational and social limitations: the gem is the author, himself. She nurtures him, because his parents couldn’t, even when she skewers him with unexpectedly obscene language, and helps him become somebody (a Yale lawyer and author!). This happens in minority communities too where someone discovers a child possessing enough internal fire to escape the ghetto, in this case, to flee the “hollers” of Kentucky. This book is an elegy to the author’s grandmother, most of all. Mamaw takes young Vance to live in Middletown, Ohio. On page 252 the author writes that he felt like a “cultural emigrant” in Ohio. He came to regard white middle-class people in Middletown as aliens and so the latter half of Hillbilly offers an account of his painful assimilation into White Middle-Class America. Blacks, who fled the South in the 1940s, landing in places like Detroit, felt something similar, just more extreme. Immigrants, Mexican or otherwise, know fully well what it feels to be a “cultural emigrant,” as I show in my own book, Becoming Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream. Hillbilly helps us understand less privileged white Americans to be sure. But, as I note, it is a study of poor people anywhere. And, for this reason it also contains cross-cultural implications of the kind I identify here that many emigrants from Appalachia might not relish.

[See Spanish version below] This is a report about criminal activity in Honduras, including the so-called mara gangs, and how the government responds to it. The author is a Spanish reporter who gathered the information sometime between 2012 and 2014 when he worked as a stringer for the Associated Press. There is no English version of this book so far. Its title is a play on the word “honduras,” which means the hollows or deepest parts, in Spanish, so the title could be translated as, the place of the deepest hollows. "A ras de suelo" offers a gritty, lightly varnished, testimonial of the way Honduran security officials (police and military) relate to the many young men who commit mayhem daily. The sale of illicit drugs locally and their transshipment northwardly, from Colombia, play a central role in the relations between these two groups. Emboldened by easy drug money, the gangs expand their domination through extortion, each chapter offering a sad cameo of extra judicial killings, complicit police and scheming government officials. Average civilians (upper class families seem to be unaffected) are terrorized in the process. Corruption and the power of drugs come together in this book to form a conditioning environment for Honduran gang members, most of whom join up because of abuse at home. "A ras de suelo" helps us understand unrest in the region today and the underpinnings of Central American migrant “caravans” moving north. [October 2018] --- Este es un informe sobre la actividad criminal en Honduras, incluyendo las mentadas pandillas “mara,” y la manera de cómo responde el gobierno. El autor es un reportero español que recopiló la información para su libro entre 2012 y 2014 cuando trabajó como reportero para el Associated Press. No existe una versión en inglés de este libro hasta el momento. "A ras de suelo" ofrece un testimonio descarnado de la forma en que los oficiales de seguridad hondureños (policías y militares) se relacionan con aquellos jóvenes que se dedican a oprimir gente diariamente. La venta de drogas ilícitas, a nivel local, y su transbordo hacia el norte, desde Colombia, juegan un papel esencial en las relaciones entre estos dos grupos. Alentadas por el dinero de las drogas, las pandillas amplían su dominación por medio de la extorsión. Cada capítulo ofrece un triste episodio de ejecuciones extrajudiciales, policías corruptos, y funcionarios gubernamentales vendidos. Los civiles ordinarios (la clase alta parece no ser afectada) se ven aterrorizados en todo esto. La corrupción y el poder de las drogas se unen en este libro para formar un ambiente acondicionador para los pandilleros hondureños, la mayoría de los cuales se echan a perder debido a un ambiente abusivo en el hogar. "A ras de suelo" nos ayuda a comprender el malestar que se reporta en la región actualmente y los fundamentos de las “caravanas” de migrantes centroamericanos que se desplazan hacia el norte.

Ampuero writes a stirring story based on a horribly tragic moment in Chilean history: the 1973 overthrow of its president by the Chilean military aided and abetted by the U.S. government. History books inform us about all this including the fact that the infamous General Augusto Pinochet directed the overthrow of President Salvador Allende. Readers who know the broad outlines of these inglorious events will discover favorably that Ampuero cleverly intertwines images of a personal and humanistic nature complementing what we already know and not repeating well known facts. This so-called novel gives the reader a close-up look at the ill-fated Chilean leader in his last months through the eyes of one of his domestic assistants, an unpretentious but straight-talking baker. Applying a discrete dose of political guile, Ampuero, who is Chilean, interlaces an American character, an ex-CIA agent, into the story, someone who suitably stands in for the American spies who assisted Allende’s debacle and later regretted it, supposedly. The author also interjects tango lore at the right moment in the days before the coup. He does this by sketching the baker as a tango enthusiast, like a million others in Latin America, one who played tango LPs in Allende’s home where he worked. Tangos dwell on love loss and life’s fleetingness. Because the baker is fully aware of the sacrifices the Chilean people are making in an atmosphere approaching a civil war, he discusses tangos with the President and mentions at least a dozen by name, plus the singers and orchestras, many allegedly broadcast on well-known Chilean radio networks of the day, like Radio Cooperativa. The baker, who could have been a poet, applies the soul-full tones and lyrics to the disaster-prone outcome awaiting him, his employer, and his fellow Chileans. This musical bit helped make this very touching story real to me. I especially appreciated how Allende, sketched as someone inclined to utopian thought and rhetoric, is described as dubious, initially, about the passionate pirouetting and love lyrics associated with this kind of Argentine music but, with the help of the baker, changes his mind as events unfold outside in the streets. This is one of the best historical novels I’ve read recently, one deserving translation into English, at least. Ampuero escribe aquí una historia conmovedora basada en un momento trágico de la historia de Chile: el derrocamiento de su presidente en 1973 por los militares chilenos azuzados y ayudados por el gobierno estadounidense. Los libros de historia nos informan de todo esto incluyendo el hecho de que el tristemente célebre general de la Armada Chilena, Augusto Pinochet, dirigió el derrocamiento del Presidente Salvador Allende. Los lectores que ya conocen estos eventos sin gloria descubrirán favorablemente que Ampuero entrelaza hábilmente imágenes de carácter personal y humanista complementando lo que ya sabemos sin repetirlo. Esta tal llamada novela ofrece al lector una ojeada íntima del malogrado mandatario chileno en sus últimos meses a través de los ojos de uno de sus ayudantes domésticos, un panadero sin pretensiones pero también sin pelos en la lengua. Debido a una discreta dosis de astucia política por parte del autor chileno, el lector tropieza con un protagonista norteamericano, ex agente de la CIA, que podría bien representar a los espías estadounidenses que ayudaron en el debacle de Allende y después se arrepintieron, supuestamente. El autor también hace uso de su conocimiento de los tangos justo en los días antes de que Pinochet desencadenara el golpe. Lo hace dibujando al panadero como un amante de esa música, como tantos en América Latina, uno que se pone a tocar LPs tangueros en la casa de Allende donde cocina para el mandatario. El tango mora sobre la pérdida del amor y la fugacidad de la vida. Debido a que el panadero está muy consciente de los sacrificios que hace el pueblo chileno en un ambiente próximo a una guerra civil, él le habla al presidente de los tangos y menciona al menos una docena por su nombre, además de los cantantes y las orquestas, grabaciones supuestamente transmitidas a través de las bien conocidas redes de radio de la época tal como la Radio Cooperativa. El panadero, que podría haber sido un poeta, relaciona las inflexiones de los tangos y sus letras emotivas al desastre que lo espera a él, a su empleador, y a sus vecinos chilenos. Este trozo musical me ayudó a apreciar la realidad detrás de esta historia. Me gustó en especial la manera en que Allende, dibujado como alguien que se inclina al pensamiento utópico y la retórica política, duda, en un principio, de las apasionadas piruetas y frases amorosas de este tipo de música argentina, pero, con la ayuda del panadero, cambia de opinión al compás de los acontecimientos que se desenvuelven afuera en las calles. Esta es una de las mejores novelas históricas que he leído recientemente, merecedora de una traducción al inglés, por lo menos.

Leon, Donna. The Golden Egg (Grove Press 2013). This is another book by the author (the first for me) of a series of mysteries solved by Commissario Guido Brunetti, an aging Venetian detective. A professional book reviewer in a woman’s magazine led me to this volume despite the fact that the reviewer panned The Golden Egg as yet another, tired installment of Brunetti’s gumshoe performance. I couldn’t disagree more. I found Leon’s construction of Brunetti’s sixth-sense of the people he engages in his every day investigations, including his relationship with his wife, quite convincing. His ability to penetrate his interlocutor man or woman with ease and guilelessness kept me turning the pages admiring Leon’s writing ability at the same time. I couldn't help but notice that her phrasing at certain moments reflects her Italian-English, a big leap I make since I’m only guessing she’s Italian or Italian American. I do note that in my hoping to learn something about Venice at the same time I was reading a detective’s tale, the author kept that dimension limited somewhat. Even so, I learned (although I can only assume it’s true) that the government of Venice retains an awful lot of personal files because Brunetti and his assistant sleuths were able to access a considerable amount of facts on the victim in the story and others who knew him with a few clicks. Leon has made Brunetti her life’s work, it seems, most probably based on a close observation of the people of Venice.

Laugheed, K. B. The Spirit Keeper, a novel (NY: The Penguin Group, 2013). I would not put this book in the Romance category. I don't think Penguin publishes romance stories. Written by what seems to be a first time novelist, this woman author captured my attention from the very first page and held it quite firmly all the way to the end. As I mention below, I missed any additional explanatory words at the end or on the back cover. As a fan of historical fiction I looked in this book for historically credible characters and events, if not background descriptions, and I definitely found them. I also noted the author carefully avoided over playing her hand in regard to her use of information that would come from careful research. She simply laid out what seems to be a believable story that could be added satisfactorily to any serious discussion about the early relations between Whites and Indians in America in the late 1700’s, namely how a red-headed Katie from Boston found it preferable to live with “Hector” and his people, referring to her Indian captor who also becomes her husband in the story. Without informing the reader in footnotes or an afterward about where she obtained her details about Indian life and culture in early America, she carefully interweaves specifics that make her story sound and convincing. I recommend it strongly.

Hurston, Zora Neale. “Dust Tracks on a Road” (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006). This is one of the most wonderful books I’ve read recently. Curiously, I have to thank Google, the internet searching giant, for bringing “Dust” to my attention. The folks at this prosperous IT Corporation recently had the guts and foresight to feature the author’s image on their famously starchy-white main page that spells out “Google,” each letter always appearing in the whimsical tones of green, red, and blue but on special occasions each letter gets redrawn and re-colored in a way to emphasize a certain event or date, in this case, perhaps the author’s birthday anniversary, Zora Neale Hurston. She was a Black American woman and so when I noticed her image on the Google main page with each letter shaded and reshaped in browns and tans I gave way to my curiosity and soon learned that she was a celebrated author. To be more exact, she is a distinguished but controversial African American woman author who reached the height of her creative writing ability in the 1940s-1950s. If you’re a person who studied and learned anything about American society over the last fifty years or so you might have responded as I did: “What!!! A well-known, Black American woman author, reaching so high in the literary world back in the days of Jim Crow?!?!” Indeed, that’s the kind of pioneer Zora Neale Hurston turned out to be. But, there’s much more to her story and I won’t even try to cover all the bases here even though my reading of Zora triggered me to keep many notes but I intend to merely highlight my strongest impressions here. “Dust Tracks on a Road” corresponds to her autobiography. Originally published in 1942 I happened to have gotten a hold of this recent 2006 edition. Incidentally, I love the title she chose for it, reflective of her remarkable linguistic ability and imagination, suggesting that she considered her life (our lives, indeed!) like a trail in the dust waiting for the wind to blow it away. She claims to have written “Dust,” or most of it, in southern California in 1941, a good time for her, although she lived most of her life on the East coast. I felt somewhat embarrassed to have discovered her via the Google search page, since I’ve spent many hours reading and reflecting on the American past, but there may be a reason to alleviate my slight discomfort. I took great pleasure in learning about her life, born in southern Florida in 1891 and deceased in 1960, because she wrote about it employing captivating and delightful language written in what appeared to be a fully honest and disarming manner. Political correctness, even in the 1940s, seems to have been anathema to her soul because her guileless remembrances of herself and her own kin and friends, all impoverished and illiterate Black folks living in small Florida towns, appeared consistent with my own understanding of comparable times and places. She uses the word Negro throughout her autobiography. She did not mind what White folk would later think of her social background because she knew, and she affirms this many times, that ignorance may be a blessing of sorts but it is hardly monopolized by dark skinned people. One example of this kind of thinking is that she was brave enough to give credit to a White neighbor farmer who “grannyed her,” or mid-wifed her, and later, when she was about nine, helped her think positively of herself when her own father or grandmother would not. Assertions of this kind (that not all Whites in her life were racists) appear with some frequency in her autobiography. Her views would have been sharply criticized by young Blacks in the 1960s, a time, as we all know when American Blacks struggled heroically in the late 1950s and 1960s against racism and discrimination. They undoubtedly would have disapproved of her spending more ink on paper exposing rustic chaw-bacons from back country Florida than assailing the bigotry of all White folks. This may explain why her many books were most probably overlooked by the rising Black teachers and professors after 1960 "and it may explain why I didn’t hear of her until I happened to open the Google page already mentioned. Zora is a gem because she lets us in on the diversity of the Black experience in America. Her unabashed willingness to look at her folks and neighbors through anthropological lenses, and her zest in enlightening the reader of what life taught her in those days concerning human beings and the universe we live in, makes her a prize. Big time publishing houses lost no time in printing her work. It seems that modern-day Blacks find themselves compelled to walk on egg shells when discussing her and her work.