What's your favorite "Latin American" novel?

[HuckleB]

Poll question: What's your favorite "Latin American" novel?

I know I have missed many great ones here. The list of choices is far to short, and I tried to keep the list to the more popular options, as much as possible.

A few that didn't make the list:

Jorge Icaza, Juan Carlos Onetti, Jose Maria Arguedas, Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Amado, Manuel Puig, Augusto Antonio Roa Bastos and G. Cabrera Infante, among others are all missing.

So, let the polling begin!

:)

P.S. -- And, yes, I made and exception from the novel form in order to include Borges.

[klook]

1. Embarrassed

to say that I'm not familiar with several of these authors! But you've given me some ideas for new literary directions.

I love Marquez, and I also think Borges is wonderful. I think One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the most amazing books I've ever read, so that got my vote.

[libertad]

2. Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

[HuckleB]

13. Loved the film.

For some reason, I haven't checked out the book. Gonna have to do that.

[BurtWorm]

3. Gabriela, Clove and Cinammon by Jorge Amado

A Brazilian writer, is a great novel, a lot of fun, sexy, big, full of life. I highly recommend it. I've got to reread it one of these days.

Also loved 100 Years of Solitude, but I wanted to tip my hat to Amado.

[HuckleB]

5. Yes, incredible book.

[Whitacre D_WI]

4. "Love in the Time of Cholera."

GGM rules.

[Kenneth ken]

40. my choice also

[TopesJunkie]

42. 'Tis a grand book, indeed --

You might dig Sabato's "Tunnel" or Garcia Marquez's "General and His Labyrinth" as well.

[markus]

6. Voted for Cortazar but . . .

I'm just finishing the lovely new edition of the Collected Fictions of Borges. And have been trying to convince my spouse she should take a crack at 100 Years of Solitude, now that is an Oprah book (!). But it's really not to her taste.

Does anyone else here like Hopscotch? I've never gotten a favorable reaction from anyone I've convinced to read it.

[Bridget Burke]

8. I liked Hopscotch.

My big ambition: get an edition in Spanish to see just how much I can understand!

(edited to add) I seem to remember an online version, in which you could skip from chapter to chapter electronically. Need to check for it again.

I do have a slim anthology of Borges poetry in Spanish. Quite beautiful & relatively easy to understand.

12. Hopscotch is one of the best books ever written

without a doubt.

Interesting fact is that the English translation by Rabassa won the first National Book Award given for a translation & when Marquez was looking for a translator for 100 Years of Solitude he asked Cortazar and Cortazar recommended Rabassa who then translated 100 Years of Solitude into English. Marquez said the translation improved on the original.

[TopesJunkie]

41. I prefer Cortazar's short stuff --

But Hopscotch is incredible.

[Bridget Burke]

7. "The Shadow of the Shadow" by Paco Ignacio Taibo, II

The author is a historian & journalist with strong political beliefs. Most of his fiction would be considered "mysteries" rather than heavy-weight literary stuff. But his style is witty & surreal, with serious ideas behind the plots.

This novel takes place just after the Mexican Revolution, as the future PRI begins to take control. Four friends in Mexico City follow the trail of mysterious murders to political plots involving corrupt officers & US forces interested in Mexico's oil. How they uncover the true story & how they deal with it make up the plot. But the telling is humorous, sad and beautifully atmospheric. All of Taibo's novels are good, but this is my favorite.

I would urge anybody unacquainted with Latin American literature to check it out; the authors listed above are a good start. From the florid fantasies of Garcia Marquez to the austere visions of Borges, you'll find a wide variety of styles. But most of these writers make most English/US "literary" fiction pale by comparison.

[HuckleB]

37. Sounds like good stuff.

Is it at all comparable to Robert Wilson, albeit with a Mexican sensibility?

[Pert_UK]

9. The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

Genius.

P.

[HuckleB]

27. Hola, tell us more, por favor.

[Pert_UK]

39. OK, so it's written by Louis De Bernieres, but it's SET in

South(ish) America! And OK, maybe it is a fictional South(ish) American country...

It's hilarious and tragic and interweaves various different plots, from the military and government corruption to love stories and ghosts, from magical cats to a plague of laughter and beginning with a woman's plans to divert a river to fill her swimming pool.

"This rambunctious first novel by the author of the bestselling Corelli's Mandolin is set in an impoverished, violent, yet ravishingly beautiful country somewhere in South America. When the haughty Dona Constanza decides to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, the consequences are at once tragic, heroic, and outrageously funny. "Walks a precarious edge between slapstick and pathos, never once losing its balance."--Washington Post Book World. "

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375700137/104-6637051-6066343?v=glance

[HuckleB]

10. Awwww. Come on! Vote! This is my first poll ever!

Give me some stats I can use!

:)

[bif]

11. "Love in the time of cholera"

Marquez

14. I'd like to nominate Clarice Lispector

she's Brazilian.
Some of the best stuff I've ever read.

[HuckleB]

15. Please tell us more.

What's your favorite of hers?

18. Favorite? That's tough.

Probably, "The Hour of the Star" or "Near to the Wild Heart" or "The Stream of Life" or "The Passion According to G.H."

See, I can't decide.

She's also an incredible short story writer. I'd highly recommend the collection Soulstorm.

Her longest novel is only about 200 pages. Most of them are around 100 pages.

[HuckleB]

19. Hmm. Maybe I'll start with Soulstorm.

How would you describe the novels?

35. novels

stream of consciousness joycean existential catholicism (The Passion According to G.H. is about an uppercrust woman who encounters a cockroach in the cupboard and has a hourslong 50 page epiphany that is both catholic (as in the passion of christ) and Kafkaesque existentialist metamorphoses of her world view) philosophical proto feminist psychological multiple viewpoint.
Lispector is very good at going inside the consciousness of others even while every word she writes is strongly marked by her personal vision. The Hour of the Star is about a dirt poor illiterate peasant secretary who dreams of being Marilyn Monroe. Her story is told by a male narrator (her boss) and Lispector is a woman so there are doublings upon doublings of meaning. A woman writer imagining and telling the story of a male narrator imagining and telling the story of a woman.
It is very easy to apply all sorts of theoretical analyses to Lispector's work, but her writing itself even though it engages very high philosophical issues does so in a very artistic fashion and somehow is not theoretical at all...

Don'tknow if that helps or not!
Oh and also, Near to the Wild Heart was written when she was 19 (around 1940, I think) and is strongly influenced by Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which means Lispector had already read that book in portuguese translation or in English that early in her life and written a novel influenced by it on top of it. The phrase Near to the Wild Heart is a quote from oyce.

[HuckleB]

36. Wonderful description. I'm Sold!

Thanks so much. I'm hitting Powell's in search of whatever I can find by her tomorrow evening.

Salud!

[chenGOD]

16. Other:

"Biting Silence" by Arturo Von Vacano

[HuckleB]

17. I admit to letting that one slip past my radar.

But it's on my list now! Found a few online reviews, and it's most intriguing.

[SOteric]

20. Isabel Allende's "Paula"

[HuckleB]

25. It's an incredible, heartwrenching book, but it's a memoir, not a novel.

[puerco-bellies]

21. 100 years of solitude

Got my vote, but Love in the Time of Cholera (Same author) is also an incredible book.

[TahitiNut]

26. Marquez most certainly earned the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

A phenominal author.

[LWolf]

22. Well,

I chose other, since I've never read any on the list. I think this may be the only "Latin American" novel I've read, if it counts as "Latin American."

Rain of Gold by Victor Villasenor.

I met him on a book tour, enjoyed the conversation, and picked up the book. Enjoyed the book, too.

[MissMarple]

23. I have to go with Isabel Allende.

She seems to be quite a nice woman, and my friend Kathy likes her very much.

[HuckleB]

28. Yes, she seems to have an incredible perspective on life.

Her honesty is second to none.

[Maestro]

24. Márquez got my vote but

Mariano Azuela's Los de abajo, about the Mexican revolution is good and El laberinto de soledad, a Pulitzer Prize winner from Octavio Paz is good as well. BTW, I met Carlos Fuentes some 12, 13 years ago. He is a very dynamic and charismatic man. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read much of his newer writings.

[Padraig18]

29. "Ficciones", by Jorge Luis Borges

A fantastic novel. :thumbsup:

[Khephra]

31. That's my pick too

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

30. Mariano Azuela's "Los de Abajo" ("The Underdogs")

probably one of the greatest books written about the mexican Revolution and the lives of the poor farmers who joined it, not really knowing why they were fighting and dying. Also mention should be given to the novela "El Indio" by Lopez y Fuentes for its very down-to-earth story of Native American life in Mexico as well as "Juan Perez Jolote" by Ricard Pozas, who documents the simple life of the Indians in the Chiapas region. This highly realistic, almost primitivistic, colorful writing is every bit as compelling as the fantastic literature of South American novelists like Borges and Cortazar. Also needing to be mentioned is Mexico's greatest novelist Juan Rulfo and his masterpiece "Pedro Paramo".

[HuckleB]

33. Dang. Nice. Thanks for the tour through Mexican literature.

I definitely added to my "to read" list thanks to your post.

Salud!

[Mz Pip]

32. Love in the Time of Cholera

by Marquez.

MzPip
:dem:

[chefgirl]

34. Other

'The Law of Love' by Laura Esquivel.
An epic romance spanning centuries, involving past lives and soul mates.
I enjoyed this one immensely.

-chef-

[TopesJunkie]

38. Vargas Llosa! --

Nobody does it better. Don't get me wrong. I love Garcia Marquez, but Vargas Llosa has gone in so many directions, and his essays are incredible, too. He's always learning, willing to admit when he is wrong, which makes him a joy to read, even when I disagree with him.

--

[adriennel]

43. Eva Luna!

by Isabel Allende is my fave, followed by 1000 Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez.