Rulfo, Juan "Pedro Páramo"

Rulfo, Juan "Pedro Páramo" (Spanish: Pedro Páramo) - 1955

This was our international online book club book for October 2024.

I really like South American and Central American authors, they are always interesting, they are different from our European or the North American ones,.

Juan Rulfo is not that different from the other authors of that genre. Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges had nothing but praise for him.

The book was interesting though quite confusing at times. You think you are at the beginning of November celebrating Dia de los Muertos (All Souls Day) because we accompany a young man into a village where his parents grew up but it is a ghost town.

It is an unusual kind of writing, so the story is hard to follow, you don't know whether you are in this world or the next, whether someone is dead or alive. The narrative is non-linear, so it jumps around all the time. But the novel is definitely worth reading.

Some comments from members at the meeting:

• The book was strongly magical realism, we did not get a good grasp of the plot, but found it poetic.
• It was quite eerily ghostly, at first it not being clear where the story is going, who is alive and who is dead and what is going on. Then the horrors started creeping up on what was going on in the town becoming just worse and worse. The lawlessness, the enabling of violence and murder and rich and powerful dominating the poorer people and women. It was a really interesting book to read, but not one I would pick up to read again.
• As we had read 2 other Latin-American authors, Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez , who had been said to have been deeply influenced by Rulfo, I could definitely see the connection, but found Rulfo to be more subtle in his approach to describing evil. At moments the writing was beautifully poetic giving a lot of feeling and nuance to the story.

Book Description:

"The highly influential masterpiece of Latin American literature, now published in a new, authoritative translation, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez

A masterpiece of the surreal that influenced a generation of writers in Latin America, Pedro Páramo is the otherworldly tale of one man’s quest for his lost father. That man swears to his dying mother that he will find the father he has never met - Pedro Páramo - but when he reaches the town of Comala, he finds it haunted by memories and hallucinations. There emerges the tragic tale of Páramo himself, and the town whose every corner holds the taint of his rotten soul. Although initially published to a quiet reception, Pedro Páramo was soon recognized as a major novel that has served as a touchstone text for writers including Mario Vargas Llosa and José Donoso.

Now published in a new translation from the definitive Spanish edition by celebrated Rulfo scholar Douglas J. Weatherford, and featuring a foreword by Gabriel García Márquez, this new edition of the novel cements its place as one of the seminal literary texts of the twentieth century."

Eschbach, Andreas "One Trillion Dollars"

Eschbach, Andreas "One Trillion Dollars" (German: Eine Billion Dollar) - 2001

This was another book from my TBR pile that had been suggested for our book club ages ago.

The story makes you think about what you could do if you had all the money in the world. What would you do to save the world? It's a tough question and if there is an answer, this book shows how hard it is to find an answer.

While I like the idea of the book and the story as such, I didn't really enjoy the novel very much. There were no likeable characters and the writing itself was not my cup of tea. And I can't even blame a translator because I read it in the original German.

Anyway, not uninteresting but it doesn't entice me to read more books by this author.

From the back cover:

"Yesterday John Fontanelli was just a pizza delivery guy in New York City. One day later he's the richest man in the world. One trillion dollars - one million times one million - $1,000,000,000,000: more money than anyone could imagine. For generations the Vacchis, an old Italian family of lawyers and asset managers, had supervised the fortune as it grew over five hundred years, until one particular date that the benefactor had stipulated in his will. The youngest male descendant would be fated to oversee the fortune for the good of humanity. John relishes his new life of luxury, rubbing elbows with royalty, buying up corporations, fielding a flood of beautiful women - until one day the phone rings, and a mysterious stranger tells the trillionaire that he knows what dirty secrets lie behind the fortune..."

Greer, Andrew Sean "Less"

Greer, Andrew Sean "Less" - 2017

So far, I have never read a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that wasn't interesting. I guess I had to come across one at one point. This was it.

If the author had expanded more on the fear of the protagonist of turning old, or even on the fear of being left alone since his boyfriend got married, this could have been a good story. Or if he had concentrated on the different events he visits in the different countries, it could have been a good "holiday story" or "summer read". But this way, it was nothing at all. The story jumps from the present into the past and while I usually like that, I still would like to know where I am at the moment.

According to the notes on the back cover, this book is supposed to be funny, hilarious. I didn't laugh even once.

The only difference between this book and chick lit? They don't talk about shoes all the time.

From the back cover:

"Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes - it would be too awkward; he can't say no - it would look like defeat. So, he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world. 

From France to India, Germany to Japan, Arthur almost falls in love, almost falls to his death, and puts miles between him and the plight he refuses to face. Less is a novel about mishaps, misunderstandings and the depths of the human heart."

Andrew Sean Greer received the Pulitzer Prize for "Less" in 2018.

Lalami, Laila "The Moors' Account"

Lalami, Laila "The Moors' Account" - 2014

What a fantastic way of retelling history. "The Moors' Account" tells us a story that has been told before - but by Spanish people, white people who came as conquerors to the new continent to be called America. This is told by one of their slaves, a guy from Morocco, who survives a lot of ordeals because of his determination to get back home again. Out of the 600 people who went on an expedition in 1527, only four survive and Mustafa, who was renamed Estebanico by the Spaniards, was one of them.

We don't just learn about the expedition and how life in America was before the Europeans arrived, we also learn about life in Morocco at the time.

Totally interesting story, told in alternating chapters, switching from Morocco to American and back. I also loved that we hear the history from another side.

It's interesting to learn that we only have one line about Mustafa in an account of one of the three others (Cabeza de Vaca): "The fourth [survivor] is Estevanico, an Arab Negro from Azamor." It's amazing, how Laila Lalami fashioned such a great story from it.

"The Moor's Account" was on both the Pulitzer Prize and Booker Prize longlist. Totally deserved it. I'm looking forward to more books by this author.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2026.

From the back cover:

"In 1527 the Spanish conquistador Pánfilo de Narváez arrived on the coast of modern-day Florida with hundreds of settlers, and claimed the region for Spain. Almost immediately, the expedition was decimated by a combination of navigational errors, disease, starvation and fierce resistance from indigenous tribes. Within a year, only four survivors remained: three noblemen and a Moroccan slave called “Estebanico”.

The official record, set down after a reunion with Spanish forces in 1536, contains only the three freemen’s accounts. The fourth, to which the title of Laila Lalami’s masterful novel alludes, is Estebanico’s own.

Lalami gives us Estebanico as history never did: as Mustafa, the vibrant merchant from Azemmur forced into slavery and a new name, and reborn as the first black explorer of the Americas, discovering and being discovered by various tribes both hostile and compassionate.

In Estebanico’s telling, the survivors’ journey across great swathes of the New World transforms would-be conquerors into humble servants and fearful outcasts into faith healers. He remains ever-observant, resourceful and hopeful that he might one day find his way back to his family, even as he experiences an unexpected (if ambiguous) camaraderie with his masters.

The Moor’s Account illuminates the ways in which stories can transmigrate into history, and how storytelling can offer a chance for redemption, reinvention and survival."

 

Laila Lalami was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Moors Account" in 2014.

Frisch, Max "Homo Faber"

Frisch, Max "Homo Faber" (German: Homo Faber) - 1957

I have no idea why I never read this. Maybe because most students in Germany hated any kind of classic literature, classic meaning written about ten years before we went to school.

So many issues in this book. Max Faber is Swiss and works around the world as an engineer. His colleagues call him Homo Faber as in the man who makes things, a direct translation from Latin.

You can tell he is a logic thinker but is world is everything but logic. His thoughts travel from World War II to the love of his youth or maybe even the love of his life, His trip to Mexico ends in a massive amount of coincidences which, would they happen to us in real life, we would never believe. Neither does Max. And that's what blinds him, makes him ignore the obvious.

Anyway, this book is a philosophical one, a thinker. We travel through time and space alongside Walter but also accompany him on his way into wisdom, into the "he who can see" part of his life.

Interesting story, good read, great writing.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

From the back cover:

"Walter Faber, engineer, is a man for whom only the tangible, calculable, verifiable exists. Dubbed Homo Faber (Man the Maker) by associates, he is devoted to the service of a purely technological world. This devoted service is not, however, without cost: on a flight to South America Faber succumbs to what he interprets as "fatigue phenomena," and we see him lose touch with reality. A return to New York and to his American mistress only convinces him of a need for further rest. Accordingly he boards a ship for Europe, where he encounters a girl who, for reasons of which he is unaware, strongly attracts him. They travel together to France, Italy, and finally Greece, where chance and fate, in an ironic twist on a theme of classic tragedy, make a blind man see."

Max Frisch received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 1976. 

I also read "The Arsonists" (Biedermann und die Brandstifter) by the same author.

Steinbeck, John "The Pearl"

Steinbeck, John "The Pearl" - 1947

I absolutely love John Steinbeck. Whether it is a large saga or a short story, he manages to describe the characters so well, to let them come alive, to give you the feeling you are there. I have never lived in the United States, I have actually never been to the United States but the way he describes it, it makes me feel like I have. Well, at least during his times. And he also describes the landscape so vividly, it feels almost like looking at a painting only someone is explaining it to you.

The story is a sad tragedy, telling of the problems of the indigenous inhabitants of Mexico, how they have to struggle through their daily lives and yet never can hope to get anywhere. Even when they seem to find a treasure, others manage to ruin it for them. Another story about how the invaders exploited the natives. Apparently an old Mexican folktale, the story rings true to your mind.

This story is a parable, full of symbolism. We have the pearl fisher and his family, we have the evil that threatens them in many forms, we have the richness that is about to come to them but taken away. We have the pearl telling its own story. It changes its music that you can almost hear, it changes its soul the same way as the story takes its path from the beginning to the end. The characters change throughout the book as well as the relationship between the characters develop, an interesting view into the lives of this culture.

A very powerful story, as anything by this fabulous author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception". Well deserved.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"In the town they tell the story of the great pearl - how it was found and how it was lost again. They tell of Kino, the fisherman, and of his wife, Juana, and of the baby, Coyotito. And because the story has been told so often, it has taken root in every man's mind."

Find the other John Steinbeck books I read here.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Runcie, James "The Discovery of Chocolate"

Runcie, James "The Discovery of Chocolate" - 2001

Somebody in our book club mentioned this book at least a decade ago. I had it on my TBR pile for ages. The only excuse I can give for not reading this earlier is that it somehow got pushed to the back.

This book is considered a fable and there are parts of the story that could certainly not happen in real life. But that is completely irrelevant in this story which should be called "The History of Chocolate and why we still indulge in it after so many years". Yumm.

The novel starts with a young Spaniard in the 16th century going to the New World and getting in touch with the wonders of chocolate. And of love. It takes us around the world together with the discoveries made throughout the centuries, including how my favourite cake, the Sachertorte, came to life.

An easy read with a lot of wonderful information decorated with a great love story. I really liked it.

From the back cover:
"A wonderfully inventive and entertaining journey through time and the history of chocolate!
The Discovery of Chocolate is a fabulous tale, as rich and exotic as the gorgeous creation that Diego de Godoy first discovers when he arrives in Mexico with Cortes and his conquistadors.

Diego is seeking his fortune in the New World. What he finds is love, and chocolate, and an elixir of life. Separated from his lover, he must wander the world, and the centuries, in search of the fulfilment that he first knew in Mexico.

In a series of dramatic episodes that are evocative, witty and thought-provoking, from revolutionary Paris to Freud’s Vienna, Fry’s Bristol and Hershey’s Pittsburgh, Diego and his ever-faithful greyhound, Pedro, seek the perfection of chocolate and the meaning of life."

Huston, Allegra "Love Child"

Huston, Allegra "Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found" - 2009

Allegra Huston is the daughter of director John Huston's second wife. When her mother dies in an accident, Allegra is only four years old, she gets introduced to her "father" John and is raised by him and various helpers. Her life is torn between the UK, Ireland, the US, Mexico and all her different "relations", her father's new wives, lovers, her siblings from his various relationships. Then, one day she is introduced to her real father.

In her memoir she tries to recreate the mother she has never known and how she managed to become a normal person and live a normal life in between all those celebrities.

Very interesting account of a life few of us would like to lead.

From the back cover:

"When Allegra Huston was four years old, her mother was killed in a car crash. Soon afterward, she was introduced to an intimidating man wreathed in cigar smoke -- the legendary film director John Huston -- with the words, 'This is your father.' So began an extraordinary odyssey: from the magical Huston estate in Ireland to the Long Island suburbs to a hidden paradise in Mexico -- and, at the side of her older sister, Anjelica, into the hilltop retreats of Jack Nicholson, Ryan O'Neal, and Marlon Brando. Allegra's is the penetrating gaze of an outsider never quite sure if she belongs in this rarefied world and of a motherless child trying to make sense of her famous, fragmented family. Then, at the age of twelve, Allegra's precarious sense of self was shattered when she was, once more, introduced to her father -- her real one this time, the British aristocrat and historian John Julius Norwich.

At the heart of 'Love Child' is Allegra's search through the unreliable certainties of memory for the widely adored mother she never knew -- the ghost who shadowed her childhood and left her in a web of awkward and unwelcome truths. With clear-eyed tenderness, Allegra tells of how she forged bonds with both her famous fathers, transforming her mother's difficult legacy into a hard-won blessing. Beautifully written and forensically honest, 'Love Child' is a seductive insight into one of Hollywood's great dynasties and the story of how, in a family that defied convention, one woman found her balance on the shifting sands of conflicting loyalties."

Lewis, Oscar "The Children of Sánchez"

Lewis, Oscar "The Children of Sánchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family" - 1961

As so often with our book club readings, this was suggested by one of our members who knew a little more about the background than we did, a member who grew up in Mexcio herself.

This is not a novel but an anthropological documentary about a family from a slum in Mexico City, a father and his four children who grow up in poverty. An interesting study that tells you so much about the way a lot of people have to live - and not just in Mexico.

As I always like books that teach me something, I did like this one a lot.

We discussed this in our international book club in June 2005.

From the back cover:

"A pioneering work from a visionary anthropologist, The Children of Sánchez is hailed around the world as a watershed achievement in the study of poverty a uniquely intimate investigation, as poignant today as when it was first published.

It is the epic story of the Sánchez family, told entirely by its members Jesús, the 50-year-old patriarch, and his four adult children as their lives unfold in the México City slum they call home. Weaving together their extraordinary personal narratives, Oscar Lewis creates a sympathetic but ultimately tragic portrait that is at once harrowing and humane, mystifying and moving.

An invaluable document, full of verve and pathos, The Children of Sánchez reads like the best of fiction, with the added impact that it is all, undeniably, true."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

Şafak, Elif "Araf"

Şafak, Elif "Araf aka The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Turkish: Araf) - 2004

A suggestion by one of our Turkish members, a book about foreigners living in the United States. We wanted to read this, alas the original English edition was sold out. We could only get the novel in Turkish, German or Dutch. I was lucky to find a used German copy and started reading.

An interesting book. Three roommates from Turkey, Morocco and Spain in Boston, one has  a Mexican-American, another an American girlfriend. All of them have to fit into the society they are in, they struggle in their own different ways. The author managed to describe these diverse characters in such a way that you could feel with them. I loved the way the various stereotypes and prejudices were dealt with, or not.

Anyway, great read, quite humorous at times but definitely a good way of describing the way someone wants to fit into their surroundings, belong somewhere. A wonderful story about friendship, as well. I am glad I read it, even though we had to strike it from our reading list.

From the back cover:

"The Saint of Incipient Insanities is the comic and heartbreaking story of a group of twenty-something friends, and their never-ending quest for fulfillment.

Omer, Abed and Piyu are roommates, foreigners all recently arrived in the United States. Omer, from Istanbul, is a Ph.D. student in political science who adapts quickly to his new home, and falls in love with the bisexual, suicidal, intellectual chocolate maker Gail. Gail is American yet feels utterly displaced in her homeland and moves from one obsession to another in an effort to find solid ground. Abed pursues a degree in biotechnology, worries about Omer's unruly ways, his mother's unexpected visit, and stereotypes of Arabs in America; he struggles to maintain a connection with his girlfriend back home in Morocco. Piyu is a Spaniard, who is studying to be a dentist in spite of his fear of sharp objects, and is baffled by the many relatives of his Mexican-American girlfriend, Algre, and in many ways by Algre herself.

Keenly insightful and sharply humorous, The Saint of Incipient Insanities is a vibrant exploration of love, friendship, culture, nationality, exile and belonging."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2024.

In Feburary 2011, we also read "The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi" by Elif Şafak.

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna"

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna" - 2009

Another great novel by Barbara Kingsolver. This one stretches from Mexico over the United States to Russia, describes the lives of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and Russian leader Trotsky, all woven together by the life of one Mexian-American guy who is thrown into their lot.

Wonderful book about politics (especially the evil side of it), prejudices, art, love - and cooking.

This certainly is one of my new favourites.

I have also read other books by Barbara Kingsolver, you can find my reviews here.

From the back cover:

"In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. 'The Lacuna' is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities.

Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico - from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City - Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence.

Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America's hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach--the lacuna--between truth and public presumption.

With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist--and of art itself. 'The Lacuna' is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.