Our Spanish-language reading group is back in Winter 2021 with three recent Latin American titles. Lola Larra’s Sprinters is a non-fiction novel in the mould of Capote’s In Cold Blood, resulting from her investigation into sinister events at a rural Chilean colony founded by an ex-Nazi. In Los pasajes comunes by Gonzalo Baz, a man who thinks he has left the past behind finds himself preoccupied by memories of the block of flats he grew up in. The final book on our list is an experimental text by visual artist Verónica Gerber Bicecci, which examines the afterlife of a mercury mine in northern Mexico.
How it works
- To read the whole book, please order the books yourself from a shop or library if you can. If you have trouble finding a title, we may be able to lend you a copy. Email info@andotherstories.org to be put in touch with the organiser.
- Read the books, then add your thoughts in the comments below.
- Join us at a meet-up to discuss what we have read. You can be sure of a lively, well-informed discussion.
Where and when
Reading Period:
November 2021 – January 2022
Meet-ups:
James Bennett will be holding an online meeting to discuss these books at 19:00 GMT on Thursday 27 January 2022. Please get in touch with us at info@andotherstories.org for joining instructions.
Discussion
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Sprinters
About the Book
In the early 1960s, a group of German immigrants settled in a village in inland Chile and founded Colonia Dignidad. For decades they presented themselves as an idyllic agricultural commune, until the testimony of certain runaway colonists revealed the horrors experienced within their walls. The colony’s founder, former Nazi medic and officer Paul Schäfer, systematically abused the boys and girls living there and collaborated with the Pinochet regime, placing the colony at its disposal for arms trafficking and as a torture centre for dissidents. After conducting a lengthy investigation and interviewing numerous colonists who survived these horrors, Chilean writer Lola Larra tells the story of the colony, starting with the mysterious death of a young boy.
Los pasajes comunes
About the Book
The narrator of Los pasajes comunes left the housing complex of his childhood many years ago, but disturbing memories of a crisis-ridden adolescence return to him like apparitions. It’s as if, in a distant galaxy, Sami and Lucas are still throwing stones from the rooftop, police cars are still burning, gunshots still ringing, and a trickle of blood runs forever down the elevator shaft. In Gonzalo Baz’s debut novel, the shared space of the flats becomes a labyrinth from which it is impossible to escape.
La compañía
About the Book
La compañía is an experimental work about Nuevo Mercurio, Zacatecas: a former mercury mining town in northern Mexico, where mining activities have led to serious levels of pollution. This is a book which defies classification. It includes photographs, diagrams, testimonies, reports and interviews, as well as a reworked version of a short story by Amparo Dávila and elements from the work of visual artist Manuel Felguérez. In examining how the abandoned, ruined mine haunts local collective memory, this work strives to reveal the psychological, environmental and social consequences of extractivist economies.
Sprinters – Lola Larra
A story told in an engaging mix of formats. The graphic novel parts are particularly nice.
The tale of Colonia Digndad has been told by various narrators and this is not the most hard-hitting treatment, nor the most original in its treatment of the source material. But the prose is solid and engaging and the thread of the story that the author chooses has its merits.
The book combines elements of novel-style narrative, reportage, memoir, raw source material and graphic novel. The strongest of these is the direct narrative on Lutgarda, an inmate of the colony, and her role in investigations into the death of a young boy there. Lutgarda is the only character in the story who ends up being fairly strongly characterised.
The other elements by contrast felt to me a bit like padding. The investigative elements are thin, self-consciously second-hand. The raw transcripts of first-hand accounts from victims are powerful but disembodied. You are frustratingly aware that the author did not interview these people directly. There is not much real investigation until Lutgarda’s story gets going. The reportage elements feel like a missed opportunity, little more than accounts of the author’s journeys to the region with not much colour and flavour.
At the same time the writer openly wrestles with her own frustrations about the whole project – but not to the extent that they drive the story, I feel. I did not get a sense that the writer’s story was linked to that of the colony in a meaningful way.
Even the narrator herself does not come across as strongly characterised, beyond a sulkiness and frustration that I found hard to engage with.
Thankfully she homes back in due time to Lutgarda’s story. This is technically the strongest strand of the book: solid novel-like prose with good rhythm and descriptions. That narrative is engaging and pulls the reader through to the end, a well-written climax with a big emotional impact.
Los pasajes comunes – Gonzalo Baz
A finely written curiosity. The prose is crisp and colourful with a bracing rhythm that carries you along even through the grimmest episodes. Although there is not much humour and little characterisation, the quirky situations and descriptions and the strong sense of place make this a charming read. The fragmented form of the short chapters and disjointed episodes is intriguing and ultimately gratifying – they deliver on their promise by somehow ending up forming a whole. I sensed faint ripples of Borges in the storyline about the friend who is inspired to write a memoir of his home neighbourhood while travelling far away and realises how little he really knows it — but I mean that as a compliment; the author steers clear of sounding derivative and the voice feels fresh and engaging in its own right – distinct from that of other Uruguayan writers I can remember from recent years. The gritty descriptions are often spot-on – having lived in Montevideo for two years, I found myself nodding in recognition at descriptions of places and people.
The only possible drawback I would signal if pressed is that I sensed an emotional restraint in the voice of the narrator. The story is told from close up but with a sense of emotional distance – the narrator rarely seems to overtly express their feelings. This is compensated for in my view by numerous pleasing philosophical asides – but I did wonder whether this narrative coolness might alienate some readers who like to be strongly emotionally engaged. And characterisation is minimal – we are told, more often than shown, what the characters are thinking and feeling.
In that sense, though anecdotal in form, it is quite a cerebral novel, and I suppose that is rather the point. If I had to choose one of these three books under consideration for translation, it would be this one.
La Compañia – Verónica Gerber Bicecci
Another compelling blend of text sources and images, intriguingly presented to form a stark, lean narrative of ecological crimes against a Mexican village over decades.
The images are remarkable: disorienting and scarcely decipherable at first but in time they come to offer a macabre visual counterpoint to the sinister goings-on related in the texts.
The first section, an adaptation of an existing fiction story, resembles a gripping magical-realist tale, told in hard solid prose. The second section is a patchwork of official, scientific and investigative source material. It is not an easy read and is not meant to be. Its power comes from its spare, forensic tone. But the material and images are presented with a deftness and economy that make them digestible and the narrative has a solid shape and rhythm.
Overall as a story for reading it has the disadvantage of lacking human colour and identifiable, relatable characters – except for partially in the first section. After that first section, the voices – even those of local witnesses – are disembodied. But that is partly the point. I found this a well-done story and pleasingly original; the curious mixing of formats is in itself an attraction and a possible selling point. But it is a bleak, unforgiving tale – overall I wonder how strongly readers would feel drawn to it.