Latin American Literature Recommendations

JCamilo thanks for your recomendations.I am needeing a good reading these days.

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Originally Posted by crisaor

Ludmila, you can check out Borges, which is a publication of Bioy Casares' personal diary. It deals with their friendship and a wide variety of subjects, among which is discussing literature but also taking gratuitous shots at colleagues and several renown figures. It conveys an image about them very different from that one obtained by reading their books. They also wrote/edited several books together, sometimes under the nom de guerre of Bustos Domeq.



Pretty close, that would be El Sueño de los Héroes, but I found the ending to be lacking (and in fact, Bioy postponed the novel in account for his inability to come up with a fitting ending for the story until he came up with the one of the novel, which is somewhat obvious and too efectist, IMO). I'd recommend Diary of the War of the Pig instead (The Invention of Morel is nice, as are some of his short stories).

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I ll be checking out your recomendations.I was thinkinf how affective lnely he was untll Maria Kodama appeared.I am curious about it.

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Originally Posted by bibliophile190

I love "The Feather Pillow" by Horacio Quiroga. It's one of my favorite short stories. I haven't much other LA literature though.

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Many of his short stories have been translated into Spanish. Read "The Decapitated Chicken", "A Season of Love", "Juan Darién", "Adrift"... to name only a few.

Rulfo's Pedro Paramo is definitely one of the greatest works of the century.

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Originally Posted by crisaor

Pretty close, that would be El Sueño de los Héroes, but I found the ending to be lacking (and in fact, Bioy postponed the novel in account for his inability to come up with a fitting ending for the story until he came up with the one of the novel, which is somewhat obvious and too efectist, IMO). I'd recommend Diary of the War of the Pig instead (The Invention of Morel is nice, as are some of his short stories).

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Yes, his short stories have a few jewels hidden. I would go for a selection - Bioy certainly can hold on with Borges when the subject is knowledge about literature and that is very interesting. I tried to buy Borges last year (not only because the need to still find something about Borges to read, but because I am very curious to see Bioy talking about literature with some critical sense) but amazon could not send my copy :(

Part of the reason why Bioy was under the Shadow of Borges is of course that Borges, to put bluntly, superior. But Bioy, instead of other younger writers that decided to "move" against Borges and find their own identidy (Thinking of Sabato and Cortazar a little here) was fine to be the "other". But Bioy was as elitist and had almost as much knowledge as Borges. But in the 60's when Borges started to travel a lot and his blindness reduced his capacity to walk around Buenos Aires, they got a little apart. (Borges was pretty much waiting his death, and that took more than a decade to happen) and Maria Kodama replaced not only Bioy but Borges's mother.

A friend told me that Bioy's wife, Silvina Ocampo was a good writer and she may be interesting.
Those last days I read Felisberto Hernandez and the guy is a master.

Latin-American litterature is my favourite! I started learning Spanish just to be able to read García Márquez, Allende, Neruda, Vargas Llosa, Borges and all the others in their native language. Not only I deeply admire your litterature, but I also empathize with Latin-Americans as people and with Latin America as a continent. I love this unique world so much, that I promised myself I would see all of it and maybe live there later on.
Don't be too discouraged by people of the western culture who don't read Hispanic litterature. I think that Western and Latin-American mentalities are too far away. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Latin America has its own way of thinking.

I have to Add Juan Rulfo, Pedro Páramo é very good, a great wording style.