A unique tapestry of the threads of Latin American history.
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The history of Latin America is as complex and disparate as the continent. Latin America itself comprises so many different histories, cultures and peoples that it is hard to consider them as a single unit, no matter how appealing the geographical reason. The book Memory of Fire mirrors this complexity, drawing on an astonishing variety of sources to weave together an ultimate picture of the country that is dominated by no particular point of view but encompasses many. Each contribution is in the form of a vignette - a fable, an extract from a letter by one of the earliest Spanish conquistadors,an irritable comment from a priest, an appeal by one of the local peoples to their new masters in Spain or a fictionalised comment on the struggles, personalities and issues that influenced the age. Each contribution, often only a few lines long, is dated and cross-referenced to other items, and a long bibliography at the back provides the historical evidence should you want it. Between them, they slowly build an image of the Spanish conquest of Latin America, and of the suffering, heroism and horrors involved in the subjugation of a continent. This book, by a journalist and writer from South America, is said to be the first of a trilogy, but the second and third volumes have yet to appear, some 15 years after the publication of the first. This is to be regretted, since the book pulls together a magnificent story from the unique strands of many distinct cultures, which will be of particular interest to anyone whose interest in Latin America extends beyond the beaches of Cancun and the tabloid images of steaming jungles and cocaine smugglers.
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I've read this book so many times...
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...that I carry it around as a permanent part of myself, a secret sixth toe. Galleano writes history as the whole jumbled pastiche of the present-tense, rather than the straight lines and symmetrical shapes culled (or outright cut) from it once has solidified into the past...I'd give it 10 stars if I could. (God, what an ugly new cover design, though! I miss the quetzalcoatl on the older edition.)
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