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Horacio Castellanos Moya El Salvador
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Horacio Castellanos Moya is one of his country’s most
important writers. He became famous in 1997 with the publication of his novel El asco (“Nausea”), because of which he
was forced into exile. Before that he had already lived in Canada, Costa Rica,
Spain and Mexico, where he worked as a journalist and writer. After spending
two years in Frankfurt/Main, he now lives in Pittsburgh/USA.
Castellanos Moya subtly but aptly portrays the Central American society
with all its contradictions and all its hypocrisy. In La diabla en el espejo
(“The Devil in the Mirror”, shortlisted for the prestigious Premio Rómulo Gallegos
for novels in 2001), Olga María, a young and attractive upper-middle class
woman, is shot. Outwardly, she boasted an impeccable way of life, but in fact
had one affair after another with men from the country’s political or business
elite. Juan Alberto Garcia, the main protagonist in the novel El arma en el
hombre (“The Weapon Man”) has always been known as “Robocop” in the
anti-guerrillas battalion. He is a murderous machine of a man who, after the
proclamation of peace, is released into real life.
Baile con serpientes (“Dance with Snakes”): My
novel is a dreamlike creation where the fantastic becomes blended with the real
[...]. It is an obsessive novel because I did not stop until I finished it.
(The author) Accordingly, the plot is extremely dynamic and wild, including
love and sex with snakes. Alberto Aragón in Donde no estén Ustedes
(“Where you are not”) arrives at Mexico City in June 1994 where he dies under
pitiful conditions. The death of the former ambassador of Salvador in Nicaragua
inevitably poses many questions.
It
is without doubt a politically and morally engaged novel, at the same time
however, an infallible piece of art and joyous read.
J. Ernesto Ayala-Dip, EL PAÍS
(Babelia) on
Donde no estén Ustedes
Without bothering to think about the extent to which this decision will
change his life, the protagonist of Insensatez
(“Senselessness”) accepts his friend Erick’s proposal: to revise the final
version of a report about the genocide of the indigenous people of a Central
American country.
And so, as he works in a small office that belongs to the city’s
Archbishop, the protagonist must confront more than one thousand pages that
tell the stories of survivors and witnesses. The horror fascinates and
overwhelms him, as he finds metaphors and expressions that vividly recreate the
killings and other acts of cruelty that would otherwise be impossible to
explain.
The everyday life of the protagonist occurs on the margin of that task.
A reality that is often frivolous and promiscuous and that contrasts with the
sensation of danger and harassment that takes over him.
With this book, Horacio Castellanos Moya stands out as one of the most
important Central American writers due to his command of narration, through the
use of a first-person narrator, and to the never superficial subjects that are
always perfectly interwoven in the plot. The English translation by Katherine
Silver received several awards.
This
is a brilliantly crafted moral fabel, as if Kafka had gone to Latin America for
his source materials. I’ve got not read anything quite like it. Clearly,
Castellanos Moya is a major writer who deserves a wide audience in the US.
Russell Banks
His new novel, Desmoronamiento (“Decay”), was just published in
Spain. Don Erasmo, chairman of the Partido Nacional in Honduras, finds himself
locked into his own bathroom. His wife is preventing him from going to her only
daughter’s wedding. Teti is marrying a Salvadoreño, a communist and 20 years
her senior. The dialogue between the spouses through the door ruthlessly
exposes the disruption of their relationship.
Teti follows her husband to El Salvador and even remains there with her
sons after his mysterious death. Completely cut off from her home as Honduras
and Salvador enter the four-day-war following a football game, a return to her
mother, to whom she is bound in a love-hate relationship, is inconceivable.
With Tirana memoria, Horacio Castellanos Moya has written a
thrilling novel about a country in a state of emergency, portrayed through the
example of a family torn in two by politics and of people who discover
greatness in themselves in times of need. In an unobtrusive style, the author
tells a tale of the dramatic events in his home country that went unnoticed by
the rest of the world, making his readers laugh with a generous portion of
humour.
It has been a week since they arrested Pericles.' So begins the diary of Haydée. The date is 24 March 1944, and the small Central American coun-try of El Salvador has been under a military dictatorship for years. The critical journalist Pericles, Haydée's husband, is not in jail for the first time. During the waiting time outside the prison Haydée starts to set up a solidarity group with the other wives. Meanwhile, a coup attempt takes place, but eventually fails. At conspirative meetings – officially posing as engagement or family celebrations – wives and mothers begin to organise resistance against the president's despotic exercise of power, which takes the form of curfews and death sentences not only for military insurgents but also for civilians. The reader accompanies Haydée, a woman who has always followed her husband's opinion on political matters, as she is forced to take her own stand. She does so with deeds and extraordinary courage.
Haydée's son Clemen also supported the putsch, and therefore had to go
underground. Nobody knows for sure whether he is alive or where he is. The
reader finds this out in witty chapters peppered with dialogue, alternating
with the diary entries by the first-person narrator Haydée. Clemen's escape
takes him from a priest's attic room to a train carriage, to the mangrove
swamps close to the border. Repeatedly, he loses sight of the highly dangerous
situation he is in and does everything just to drink a vodka or peer under a woman's
skirt, even disguised as a clergyman. - The novel closes with a scene almost 30
years later, long after Haydée's death of breast cancer, with the suicide of
Pericles.
Represented for Tusquets, Mexico
Original editions and rights sold:
Novels:
La diabla en el espejo, Ornese: Linteo 2000,
182 p.
Canada/France: Les Allusifs 2004, pb 10/18, 2006 ● Switzerland: Rotpunkt 2003 (German), Audiobook TechniSat
Digital 2006 ● UK:
Alma Books ● US: New Directions
2009
El arma en el hombre, Barcelona/
Mexico City: Tusquets 2001, 132 p.
Canada/France: Les Allusifs 2005, pb 10/18, 2008 ● Italy: La Nuova Frontiera 2006 ● Portugal: Teorema ● Switzerland: Rotpunkt 2003 (German), Audiobook TechniSat
Digital 2006
El asco. Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador, San Salvador: Editorial
Arcoiris 1997, 119 p.
El asco. Tres relatos violentos, Barcelona: Casiopeia
2000, 158 p.
Canada/France:
Les Allusifs 2003, pb 10/18 2005 ● Serbia & Montenegro: Puna
Kuca
Baile con serpientes, Barcelona/ Mexico City: Tusquets 2002, 193 p.
Canada/France:
Les Allusifs 2007 ● Canada:
Biblioasis 2009 ● France: Univers Poche
Donde no estén Ustedes, Barcelona/Mexico City: Tusquets 2003, 270 p.
Canada/France:
Les Allusifs 2008● Switzerland: Rotpunkt 2005
Insensatez,
Barcelona/Mexico City: Tusquets 2004, 155 p.
Canada/France: Les Allusifs 2006, pb 10/18 ● Israel: Babel ● Norway: Cappelen ● Portugal: Teorema 2007 ● Sweden: Leopard 2009 ● US: New Directions 2008
Desmoronamiento, Barcelona/Mexico City:
Tusquets 2006, 210 p.
Canada/France: Les Allusifs
Tirana Memoria, Barcelona/Mexico
City: Tusquets 2008, 358 p.
Germany: S.
Fischer