Pierce AlquistÌęhas an MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is a freelance book critic and writer. She is also the Communications Coordinator for the Transnational Literature SeriesÌęat BrooklineÌęBooksmith, an author events series thatÌęfocusesÌęon stories of migration, the intersection of politics & literature, and works in translation.ÌęShe can be found on Twitter @PierceAlquistÌęandÌęonÌę.

by Selva Almada, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews (Graywolf)

In Selva Almada’s arresting debut, translated by Chris Andrews, four souls are “thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina” as a storm brews overhead. When Reverend Pearson’s car breaks down, fate leads him and his teenage daughter Leni to the dusty, out-of-the-way garage of Gringo Bauer and his assistant Tapioca. The traveling Evangelical quickly takes an interest in Tapioca’s pure soul, setting up the increasingly tense relationship between the mechanic and the man of god. As the storm breaks and the titular winds lay waste, the lives of these characters will be forever changed.

The Wind That Lays Waste is a profound examination of family and faith, a modern fable really. In comparison to the other books on the longlist, it’s one in a trend of rural novels and yet it stands apart in its writing and approach—told in one day and with only four main characters it may seem simple but in reality it’s this refreshingly deep and thoughtful novel, a self-contained moment of time and place. A simplicity that I can imagine is one of the most challenging things for an author to write, and then a translator to convey.

And what a translation it is! Perfect sentences abound, “His mother’s skirt moved in front of him like a curtain revealing and hiding the landscape as the cloth blew about in the wind.” And each character is compelling—to describe them as “fleshed out” seems almost tongue-in-cheek as it doesn’t come close to encompassing the depths to which Almada plunges into each character’s heart and soul and Andrews masterfully captures it:

But Leni had no lost paradise to revisit. Her childhood was very recent, but her memory of it was empty. Thanks to her father, the Reverend Pearson, and his holy mission, all she could remember was the inside of the same old car, crummy rooms in hundreds of indistinguishable hotels . . . and a mother whose face she could hardly recall. The Reverend completed his circuit and came back to where his daughter was standing, as rigid as Lot’s wife, as pitiless as the seven plagues. Leni saw his eyes glistening and quickly turned her back on him.

The Wind That Lays Waste is also set against one of the most powerful and beautifully described atmospheres of a novel I’ve ever read. It’s a novel that tangibly feels like weather. As the plot picks up, the characters swirl around each other and everything thickens like the dense, sticky, humidity that comes before the storm. As the story reaches its peak, tensions erupt like thunder and lightning and then the rains finally come. Whether or not they could have been stopped and the fate of these four characters changed is anyone’s guess.

The storm had gathered in the blink of an eye. If they hadn’t needed the rain so badly, the Gringo would have stopped it like his mother had taught him, because it wasn’t looking pretty. She had passed the secret on to him before she died. Out in the open, facing the storm front, you drive an ax into the ground six times, to make three crosses and after the last blow you leave it stuck there. It’s hard to believe if you’ve never seen it done, but the sky opens and the raging storm turns into a blustery passing wind. The storm slinks off, with its tail between its legs, to someplace where no one knows the secret. But those who know it must use it with care. Every crack in the earth was crying out for rain. This was no time to turn a storm away.

Nature’s secret thought the Gringo, kills any secret man can know.

There are few things I love more than a dark, strange book and my reading for the judging this year has provided me with such delightfully weird and unsettling books by women in translation that I couldn’t help but share them with my fucked-up fellows! And I know there are even more that I still need to read so please send your recs my way and stay dark, weirdos.

by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong (Open Letter)

“If you’re looking for a book that will make you gasp out loud, you’ve found it.” So says Kirkus Reviews and dozens of other publications and reviewers who can’t stop talking about Flowers of Mold, myself included. Unnerving, haunting, captivating, these ten stories follow ordinary characters going about their lives—they have a nightmare, lend their neighbor a spatula, or find out their landlord wants to sell their building. But something disturbing lies just below the surface. One small crack and everything’s unleashed. “The latest in the trend of brilliant female Korean authors to appear in English, Ha cuts like a surgeon, and even the most mundane objects become menacing and unfamiliar under her scalpel.”

by Mariana DimĂłpulos, translated by Alice Whitmore (Transit Books)

In striking fragments that shift between time and place, All My Goodbyes follows a young Argentinian woman and her “repeated acts of departure.” She leaves places. She leaves people. Ultimately, she thinks she’s found a home in the southernmost region of Patagonia, a place to stay, but it’s not to be. In the midst of archiving all of her goodbyes, her departures, we also have violent murders that haunt her story from the first page. A propulsive, restless force kept me glued to this novel and I read it in one sitting.

by Alia Trabucco ZerĂĄn, translated by Sophie Hughes (Coffee House)

Iquela and Felipe are two friends, living in the legacy of Chile’s dictatorship, when Paloma, an old acquaintance, comes to Santiago to repatriate and bury her mother. Ash rains down from the sky from a nearby volcanic eruption, grounding flights all over the country. When Paloma’s mother’s coffin ends up lost in transit, the three friends borrow a hearse (as you do) and journey through the mountains to get her. Intense and haunting, The Remainder is a startling reckoning with the history of violence. It’s a novel of unforgettable imagery: Felipe wandering the streets of Santiago counting the dead, the three friends drinking in the hearse, and the ash falling and mixing in with the snow in the mountains. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.

by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan (City Lights)

“Silvina Ocampo is one of our best writers. Her stories have no equal in our literature” wrote Jorge Luis Borges and now for the first time in English translation, readers can delight in all of the strange brilliance that is Silvina Ocampo’s first collection of stories, Forgotten Journey. Published alongside her novella The Promise, this collection is primarily concerned with the lives of young women and girls. Often menacing and strange, each story has a thrill to it, a dark joy that keeps you fixed to the collection. In her foreword, Carmen Boullosa writes of the often cited comparison between Ocampo and Julio Cortázar but argues instead that, “While in his fabulous stories Cortázar discovered the unreal in everyday life, Silvina enters real, detailed, intimate spaces, which she observes with an eye that is intimate, real and detailed, and yet an eye from another world.”

by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead)ÌęÌę

Samanta Schweblin, author of the literary sensation Fever Dream, returns with her first short story collection translated into English. Like Fever Dream, I was struck by the elusive, almost unsatisfactory nature of the stories. Some are strikingly short. Others are carefully crafted to confound. All leave you wanting more and thinking about them long after. Strange and fantastic, dark and disturbing, the stories in Mouthful of Birds are sure to please fans of Schweblin’s uniquely unsettling style.

Women in Translation Month is nearing its end but the joy of celebrating and reading women in translation doesn’t have to! That’s especially true in a year like this one—there are so many exciting new releases by women eligible for this year’s Best Translated Book Award in Fiction. I thought I’d share a recommendation for every day in the month of August, so here are thirty-one brilliant books to keep the spirit of Women in Translation Month going. Enjoy!

by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell (Riverhead)

Strange and fantastic, dark and disturbing, the stories in Mouthful of Birds are sure to please fans of Fever Dream and Schweblin’s uniquely unsettling style.

by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas (And Other Stories)

Tentacle is the queer, punk, dystopian, climate change, science fiction novel from the Dominican Republic you didn’t know you needed in your life. An unforgettable and wild book.

by Linda Boström KnausgÄrd, translated by Martin Aitken (World Editions)

An intense and masterful portrait of a family, with a child narrator you won’t soon forget.

by Mariana DimĂłpulos, translated by Alice Whitmore (Transit)

In striking fragments that shift between time and place, All My Goodbyes follows a young Argentinean woman and her “repeated acts of departure.” A propulsive, restless force kept me glued to this novel and I read it in one sitting.

by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt (FSG)

A women starts her life over again after her husband leaves her and their young daughter. Her new Tokyo apartment is awash in light, but she finds herself falling further into darkness and depression. Painful and beautiful with a truly exquisite translation.

by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith (Hogarth)

A nameless narrator reckons with the death of her older sister, who died a few hours old and left an indelible mark on the narrator and her family. She writes about this tragedy in a series of profound reflections through the color white. A gorgeous and startling meditation on death and grief.

by Rania Mamoun, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette (Comma Press)

A beautiful and moving collection of stories set in contemporary Sudan.

by Helene Tursten, translated by Paul Norlen (Soho)

The first installment in a new series from the author of the Irene Huss series and An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good follows Swedish Detective Inspector Embla Nyström as she’s swept into a murder investigation during her family’s annual moose hunt. A fun and chilling Nordic mystery.

by Igiaba Scego, translated by Aaron Robertson (Two Lines)

A poignant family story for our turbulent times, this novel set across Somalia, Argentina, and Italy still haunts me.

by Kim Yideum, translated by Jiyoon Lee (Deep Vellum)

Blood Sisters, the debut novel from celebrated poet Kim Yideum, tells the story of Jeong Yeoul, a college student trying to figure out who she is and who she wants to be amidst the unrest of 1980s South Korea. A thought-provoking and powerful novel.

by Hiroko Oyamada, translated by David Boyd (New Directions)

Three employee’s lives are taken over by the large factory they work for in this strange and surreal tale, that I suspect might fill part of the Convenience Store Woman–sized hole in many readers’ hearts.

by Duanwad Pimwana, translated by Mui Poopoksakul (Feminist Press)

Pimwana turns her keen eye and sharp wit on a changing modern Thailand in this collection.

by SigrĂșn PĂĄlsdottĂ­r, translated by Lytton Smith (Open Letter)

The narrator of History. A Mess. believes she’s made a groundbreaking discovery, one that will forever change the art world and her own academic career. That is until she realizes⁠ that her discovery was nothing more than two pages stuck together. Strange and interior, History. A Mess. is a fascinating novel.

by Juli Zeh, translated by John Cullen (Nan. A Talese)

A suicide prevention clinic doubles as a criminal organization connecting suicidal patients to terrorist organizations in this prescient thriller inspired by today’s headlines.

Ìę

by Hiromi Kawakami, translated by Alison Markin Powell (Europa)

In ten closely-linked stories, Kawakami follows the lives of ten different women at their intersection points with the enigmatic and seductive Yukihiko Nishino. An intimate and insightful portrayal of sex, love, and modern relationships.

by Alia Trabucco ZerĂĄn, translated by Sophie Hughes (Coffee House/And Other Stories)

Intense and haunting, The Remainder is a startling reckoning with the history of violence and a novel of unforgettable imagery as three friends set off on a journey to find a coffin lost in transit.

by Veronica Raimo, translated by Stash Luczkiw (Black Cat)

A fascinating novel of power and sex, it’s been called “the first post-Weinstein novel” by Vanity Fair Italy.

by Selva Almada, translated by Chris Andrews (Graywolf)

In Almada’s arresting debut, four souls are “thrown together on a single day in rural Argentina” as a storm brews overhead. A profound examination of family and faith, set against one of the most powerful and beautifully described backdrops of a novel I’ve ever read.

by Wioletta Greg, translated by Jennifer Croft (Transit)

In this much-anticipated continuation of Swallowing Mercury, we follow Wiola as she leaves her childhood village for the nearby city. She moves around, adapting, growing, and soaking up the sights, sounds, and stories around her. A lush and evocative translation.

by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder (Pantheon)

The master Yoko Ogawa’s take on an Orwellian novel of state surveillance. Ogawa’s writing is always stunning—haunting in its own spare, powerful way.

by Asja Bakić, translated by Jennifer Zoble (Feminist)

A thought-provoking and darkly funny collection of stories from an exciting new voice in Balkan literature.

by Pola Oloixarac, translated by Roy Kesey (Soho)

A wildly brilliant and genre-defying novel that combines science fiction with naturalism, political satire, and more, resulting in a darkly funny read.

by Jokha Alharthi, translated by Marilyn Booth (Sandstone/Catapult)

The first novel originally written in Arabic to ever win the Man Booker International Prize, and the first book by a female Omani author to be translated into English. A beautiful and sweeping story of one Omani family.

Ìę

by KristĂ­n EirĂ­ksdĂłttir, translated by Larissa Kyzer (Amazon Crossing)

A novel of isolation and secrets, the emotional resonance of A Fist or a Heart sneaks up on you as you’re busy trying to figure out what’s lying underneath the solitary lives of these women.

Ìę

by Anne Serre, translated by Mark Hutchinson (New Directions)

From the author of the brilliant novel The Governesses, comes another beguiling piece of art, this time a collection of three novellas exploring desire and morality.

by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Riverhead/Fitzcarraldo)

Reclusive Janina is a passionate astrologer and advocate for animals, happy to keep to her quiet life until her neighbor turns up dead and things take a strange turn in her community. Part investigative thriller and part fairytale, with biting social critique and a wicked sense of humor.

by Ambai, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom (Archipelago)

Ambai’s stories of motherhood, marriage, and sexuality confront the construction of gender in Tamil literature.

by Ha Seong-Nan, translated by Janet Hong (Open Letter)

I would love to get a glimpse into Ha Seong-Nan’s brain, although I’m a little scared of what I might find. These stories are chilling and I’d recommend them to fans of Revenge by Yoko Ogawa.

by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor (FSG)

A deceptively simple and beautifully told story of a young cook finding his way in the kitchen and in the world.

Ìę

by Mikella Nicol, translated by Lesley Trites (VĂ©hicule)

I love a novel set during a heat wave. The sticky, claustrophobic heat affecting everyone’s tempers and judgment. This one, set in Quebec, is a gem.

by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Jessica Powell (City Lights)

Legend Silvina Ocampo worked on perfecting this novella over the course of twenty-five years! A woman reminisces about her life, and lets her imagination get away with her, after falling into the sea.

Pierce Alquist has a MA in Publishing and Writing from Emerson College and currently works in publishing in Boston. She is also a freelance book critic, writer, and contributor. She can be found on Twitter and on .

Ìęby Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson (France, New Directions)

A country house stands alone. It’s largely shut off from the world outside. There is a Monsieur, a Madame, maids, governesses, and a group of young boys—pupils to be educated with care and discipline. But in this U.S. debut from major French writer Anne Serre, the titular governesses are not watching their pupils but are instead off having frenzied erotic adventures. Ìę

It’s not every day you get to hunt in a household like this. There’s no quarry most of the time. This one will be tackled head-on, licked, bitten and devoured in a ladylike manner. And once he’s exhausted and has nothing further to offer, they’ll leave him. He’ll lie there like a babe in arms, naked on the sage-green meadow . . . They walk through the woods entwined in each other’s arms, their lips bruised and swollen, their bodies appeased at last. In the garden, the children have come out to play. They surround the governesses, cheering them on like victors returning from war. The boys dance all the way to the porch, then disappear with them into the wide, freezing corridor.

The Governesses is a gem—sexy, funny, smart, and cleverly translated by Mark Hutchinson. Don’t let its slimness fool you (it’s about 100 pages) this novella contains multitudes. It’s part fairy tale, part French fable, part comedy. Kirkus calls it “A sensualist, surrealist romp” writing that “each sentence evokes a dream logic both languid and circuitous as the governesses move through a fever of domesticity and sexual abandon.” Parul Sehgal in The New York Times describes it as, “an aria, and one delivered with perfect pitch.”

It’s unabashedly erotic and fun but it wouldn’t make it to the Best Translated Book Award longlist on those qualities alone. In its marketing copy, the book is described as an “intense, delicious meringue of a novel.” I liked that turn of phrase on my first reading of the book. I still do. It is true. Accurate. The Governesses is sweet, light—an indulgence. But a meringue, to me, implies only sweetness. Do you know that delightful sharp pain in your jaw when you consume something sour? It’s here too. The Governesses has bite to it. It stings. It makes you salivate.

Amidst the sexual abandon, is the sharp, the sour. As the governesses drift about the house and grounds they’re watched by the old man in the house next door through a telescope. They know he’s watching, they even sometimes tease and taunt him, but it is still disturbing. Men are ravished, devoured, before they even know what hit them. There’s violence here. In equal parts to elegance and beauty. It makes for a captivating and challenging read and I bet you’ll find yourself as fascinated by this novella as I was and am. But for now, because I’m just not as wicked as the governesses, I’ll leave you on one of those notes of graceful artistry.

Hiking around like this, they experience the kind of joy that makes you eager for life, and eager to lead a fuller life. Whenever they walked past a leafy green enclosure they felt, not that happiness was there in that leafy green enclosure, in the shade of the thick oak trees, but that happiness was like that, had the silent majesty of those leaves, the dimensions of that buoyant enclosure, the dreamy depths of its carpet of grass, and that they needed to have all these forces and qualities coursing through their life.

This week, Pierce Alquist of BookRiot writes about some of the Japanese titles that have stood out to her over the course of her BTBA reading.Ìę

While looking over the titles I’ve read and enjoyed in the last few months that are eligible for the Best Translated Book Award, I noticed a pattern. There are a considerable number of Japanese titles! 2018 was a strong year for Japanese literature in translation and I’ve decided to highlight a few of the standouts from a group of amazingly talented and award-winning authors and translators.

by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

This book has gotten so much buzz and I have to add myself to its list of fans. Keiko Furukura has worked at a convenience store for 18 years, comfortable in the patterns and norms of the store and its customers but aware of her family and society’s general disappointment in her. When a young man enters her life she has the chance to change everything—if she wants to. From one of Japan’s most exciting contemporary writers, Convenience Store Woman is a dark, funny, and compelling novel with a heroine that defies convention and description.

by Yukiko Motoya, translated by Asa Yoneda

I loved this collection of quirky and wonderful stories. Winner of the Akutagawa Prize and the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, Motoya is a magician—she takes mundane, daily life and just twists it into these amazingly strange and fantastic tales. In these stories, a newlywed notices that her husband’s features are sneakily sliding around his face to match hers, umbrellas are more than they seem, women are challenging their boyfriends to duels, and you might want to reconsider dating the girl next door. I’d recommend this collection to fans of Hiromi Kawakami and Carmen Maria Machado.

by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

I’m a big fan of the Japanese novella series from Pushkin Press and of the three released in 2018 (The End of the Moment We Had, The Bear and the Paving Stone, and Ms Ice Sandwich) this one might be my favorite, but ask me again tomorrow and I’ll likely give you another answer. Ms Ice Sandwich is a tender coming-of-age story about a young boy’s adoration of the woman who sells sandwiches at his local supermarket. Ms Ice Sandwich, as he calls her, is gruff and aloof but our young narrator is fascinated by her eyes, “Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer.” It’s a delightfully quirky and funny novella that nonetheless deals with some serious themes. The writing is subtle and engaging, deftly translated by Louise Heal Kawai.

by Masatsugu Ono, translated by Angus Turvill

Some books are hard to capture in a review and Lion Cross Point is one of them. This beautiful and haunting story is so much more than the sum of its parts, which include coming-of-age tale, sensitive portrayal of trauma and healing, and elements of a ghost story. The writing is poignant and unsettling but never sentimental and thoughtful ten-year-old Takeru is a child narrator who will stay with you past the reading of this book. Lion Cross Point is masterfully done by Masatsugu Ono and translator Angus Turvill and I’m shocked that this is the first time Ono has been published in English.

by Hideo Yokoyama, translated by Louise Heal Kawai

Based on author Hideo Yokoyama’s own experiences, Seventeen is an intense and immersive newsroom drama that depicts the unfolding events at a local newspaper following the 1985 crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123—the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history—right on their doorstep. It’s a fascinating and insightful account of newsroom politics and proceedings but it’s also a complex and thoughtful look at relationships, stress, grief, and the seen and unforeseen effects of a tragic event, even decades later. And I found that this post written by Louise Heal Kawai furthered my appreciation of this incredible book.

In the book’s opening chapters, the narrator—who remains unnamed—falls into an icy river in the suburbs of Berlin. A Korean writer and student living in Germany, she begins to look back over the years, blurring lines between past and present as she examines her relationship with Joachim, her on-and-off, working class boyfriend, and M, her German tutor, a refined and enigmatic young woman she’s in love with. The contrast between these two partners and the tensions around language and class are fascinating, but I had a hard time just getting past how gorgeous the writing was.

The narrator describes M, setting the scene for their many discussions of music and language, “The rain water trickled down M’s pale, almost ghost-like forehead, down over her eyelids, still more sunken after her recent cold, and over her slightly-downward pointed nose. When she tilted her head upward, her lips appeared unbelievably thin and delicate, tapering elegantly even when she wasn’t smiling, flushed red as though suffused by the morning sunlight. The delicate, languidly prominent scaffolding of her cheekbones . . . If books and language were the symbol of M’s absolute world, then music was her inaccessible mind, her religion, her soul.”
The narrative is constantly shifting, pliable, and fluid, in both tense and setting. The construction seems effortless, allowing the narrator to sift through her life, her relationships, and most importantly the end of her relationship with M to find closure in it all. Her memory, one can’t forget, is imperfect—an approximation and perhaps a reinvention.

The style of the writing evokes the very music that seems to drive the story. Smith in an interview with Tobias Carroll for Vol. 1 Brooklyn stated, “When I was translating her, the thing that I was most aware of was trying not to smooth out the weirdness too much. . . . It becomes quite hypnotic when you read it in Korean, and quite lyrical in places as well. She writes a lot about music, and the other thing that her style evokes is that. It’s more about the cadence of the sentence. The core book itself, the structure, is more about variations on a theme, and coming back to certain motifs rather than a straight chronology.”

Thankfully for readers, Bae Suah is prolific and Deborah Smith seems determined to bring these great books to English language readers.

The novel revolves around the llano, and its significance to two feuding cousins with vast ranching estates. Doña Barbara, a treacherously beautiful rancher has steadily expanded her estate over the years through her calculating manipulation and seduction of men, furthering her reputation as a witch with her nightly conversations with her “Partner,” the devil. These corrupt dealings committed by Barbara and the mismanagement of land, wealth, and justice by government officials in the novel represent many of Gallegos’ criticisms against the Venezuelan dictatorship. When her cousin, Santos Luzardo, returns from his many years in the city to reclaim his land and ranch, a struggle ensues that jeopardizes the fate of the llano. The struggle is one of violence and seduction, as McMurty perfectly describes it, Gallegos’ llano is “steamy, tumescent, lust driven.” Furthermore, the llano is spilling over with all sorts of unimaginable occupants characteristic of early magical realism, like the prehistoric one-eyed alligator and various villains like the Turk and his harem, the Toad, the Wizard, and a cowboy assassin…

The llano is the quintessential backdrop for this mixture of magic and reality, allowing for a seamless understanding of the sensuality and danger inherent in the plain and the work of the ranchers. It seems an environment made for the smoky haze between these two worlds, and the feud between the two cousins. Gallegos captures in minute detail the contrasting nature of the Plain:

The Plain is at once lovely and fearful. It holds, side by side, beautiful life and hideous death. The latter lurks everywhere, but no one fears it. The Plain frightens, but the fear which the Plain inspires is not the terror which chills the heart; it is hot, like the wind sweeping over the immeasurable solitude, like the fever lying in the marshes. The Plain crazes; and the madness of the man living in the wide lawless land leads him to remain a Plainsman forever. (90)

It is his characterization of Doña Barbara, however, that establishes Gallegos as a master. He details her upbringing as a young girl, abused by the men around her, nearly sold as a sex slave, and ultimately the death of the only man to show her any kindness in her youth. Her hatred and sexual manipulation comes to a halt, however, when she meets her cousin Santos and finds in his gentle, noble demeanor a man worthy of her respect. Gallegos allows for a full and crucial understanding of Barbara’s convoluted feeling towards Santos:

Up to then, all her lovers, victims of her greed or instruments of her cruelty, had been hers as the steers marked with her brand were hers. Now when she saw herself repeatedly rebuffed by this man who neither feared nor desired her, she felt that she wanted to belong to him, although it had to be as one of his cattle, with the Altamira sign burned on their sides; and she felt this with the same overmastering force which had driven her to ruining the men she loathed. (220)

Rómulo Gallegos in his intimate understanding of the wild, unyielding llano, the Venezuelan people, and the tragic figure of Doña Barbara, created a masterpiece of Latin American Literature, establishing an important and inspiring foundation in magical realism.

Any author who has been both nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature and exiled from his country because of the strength of his criticisms against the nation’s longstanding dictatorship deserves to be taken note of. RĂłmulo Gallegos in his acclaimed novel, Doña Barbara, hailed as a classic of Latin American literature, is one such author, almost forgotten by English speaking readers since his initial popularity in the 1930’s. In the University of Chicago’s recent reprint, Gallegos receives the credit due to him as a Nobel Prize nominee, the first democratically elected President of Venezuela, and forerunner of magical realism, with Larry McMurty writing in his foreword to the novel, “There are echoes of Gallegos in GarcĂ­a MĂĄrquez, Vargas Llosa, and Fuentes.” In Doña Barbara, Gallegos weaves together the story of the Venezuelan llano, or prairie, and the lives of the plainsmen, the ranchers and cowboys, thieves and villains, that all operate around Doña Barbara, the witch.

The novel revolves around the llano, and its significance to two feuding cousins with vast ranching estates. Doña Barbara, a treacherously beautiful rancher has steadily expanded her estate over the years through her calculating manipulation and seduction of men, furthering her reputation as a witch with her nightly conversations with her “Partner,” the devil. These corrupt dealings committed by Barbara and the mismanagement of land, wealth, and justice by government officials in the novel represent many of Gallegos’ criticisms against the Venezuelan dictatorship. When her cousin, Santos Luzardo, returns from his many years in the city to reclaim his land and ranch, a struggle ensues that jeopardizes the fate of the llano. The struggle is one of violence and seduction, as McMurty perfectly describes it, Gallegos’ llano is “steamy, tumescent, lust driven.” Furthermore, the llano is spilling over with all sorts of unimaginable occupants characteristic of early magical realism, like the prehistoric one-eyed alligator and various villains like the Turk and his harem, the Toad, the Wizard, and a cowboy assassin…

Click here to read the entire review.

A poignant portrayal of women, Daughter of Silence illustrates these parallels between the Holocaust and Argentina’s political past, while also exploring the unique dichotomy between being Jewish and living in Latin America, a primarily Catholic nation. According to Lockhart in his introduction to the text, “Argentina is home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America and one of the largest in the world” and the text explores the complexities of a divided national and religious identity. Rita also meditates on the controversial links between the Holocaust and her Jewish identity, and her imprisonment as a Peronist rebel, warning that history is in a constant state of repetition. In a moment of vulnerability Rita details her path to incarceration and its correlation to her mother’s path to the Holocaust, one of marginalization and silence. She counts the strikes against her, her religion, her culture, her politics, and ultimately her sex:

A space for the abused and desperate. Peronism was the ideal place in which to orient those feelings. The Peronism of passion, of mysticism, of marginalization, of prominence. Jew and Peronist. Peronist and Jew. Woman, Jew, and Peronist. A triple provocation. The stories of concentration camps that I tried to decipher between books and whispers among family members became an undeniable obsession. All the barriers that Tinkeleh put in place with her silence made my journey inevitable. (78)

Fingueret’s prose captures Rita’s desperate, winding thoughts as she navigates her imprisonment and clings to her memories to maintain her sanity. In her rapidly declining state, however, she finds solace in piecing together her mother’s unspoken memories of the Holocaust. Whether this imagined world is healthy or another tax on her already damaged mental state is left undiscussed, but Rita uses these imagined memories to connect to her mother and other resilient women, etching their names on her cell walls for inspiration.

Rita’s story is told through fragments, becoming increasingly disorienting as her abuse escalates. In any lesser author’s hands, this disorientation would merely result in a reader’s confusion but Fingueret instead artfully references Rita’s fragile mental state, with the spaces between the text, the silence, telling more of Rita’s struggle than her words alone. Rita herself is insightfully portrayed, surrounded by the impassioned idealism of the Peronists around her, and struggling to connect with a distant, silent mother, she discovers in prison the deeper similarities between herself, Tinkeleh, and generations of other women, forced into the bind of silence and obedience but driven to survive.

The novel ends uncertainly, as Rita is transferred from her prison, defiantly looking at the blank expanse of her future:

I stretch my body across the void. I see a lot, I hear too much, I file and file, thousands of voices, ages, hair colors, professions, addresses: Auschwitz in Buenos Aires. These women console me. They know as well as I do where this train is headed. Did I get off at the wrong station? I have no regrets. (147)

Despite its difficult subject matter, the book concludes with some remnants of hope, as Rita’s resilience stands as a testament to the strength and will to survive of generations of women. The deep unsettling connections allow Fingueret to create a wholly new Argentinean novel, exploring the relationship between Judaism and Latin America, women and their tradition of silence, and ultimately calling for a clearer understanding of the nature of history.

This is Pierce’s first review for threepercent. Pierce is a student at the URochester majoring in English Literature, minoring in Journalism and Anthropology. She has interned at various publishing companies, with publications ranging from magazines to academic works, and now translated literature. After studying abroad this past semester at Oxford she is happy to return to her native Rochester.

Here is part of her review:

Acclaimed Argentinean poet and novelist Manuela Fingueret details the 1980’s neofascist military dictatorship in Argentina and its dark, painful parallels to the Holocaust through the tales and memories of a mother and daughter in her second novel Daughter of Silence. Translated by Darrell B. Lockhart, Daughter of Silence is a crucial addition to “The Americas” series of contemporary Latin American literature published by Texas Tech University Press, for its exploration of violence, national identity, and survival. Fingueret depicts the tradition of a silent female figure, mute and helpless throughout history, and drastically refutes it with the voice of her narrator Rita, a young Jewish Argentinean and incarcerated Peronist revolutionary. Abused, starved, and rapidly losing her mind, Rita weaves together both her memories and the experiences of her mother, Tinkeleh, a Holocaust survivor.

A poignant portrayal of women, Daughter of Silence illustrates these parallels between the Holocaust and Argentina’s political past, while also exploring the unique dichotomy between being Jewish and living in Latin America, a primarily Catholic nation. According to Lockhart in his introduction to the text, “Argentina is home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America and one of the largest in the world” and the text explores the complexities of a divided national and religious identity. Rita also meditates on the controversial links between the Holocaust and her Jewish identity, and her imprisonment as a Peronist rebel, warning that history is in a constant state of repetition. In a moment of vulnerability Rita details her path to incarceration and its correlation to her mother’s path to the Holocaust, one of marginalization and silence. She counts the strikes against her, her religion, her culture, her politics, and ultimately her sex:

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