|
Henry Trujillo Uruguay
|
|
Henry Trujillo was born in Mercedes, Uruguay in 1965.
Trained as a sociologist, he published his first short novel in 1993. His
novels, including Tres buitres ("Three Vultures"), are very popular
with rea-ders and have gone into reprints. Trujillo now lives in Montevideo.
A rainy night in a shabby Montevideo bar. Two men are sitting at a table, as the
young man tells the old man a story. A tape recorder is running.
It all starts with Tres
buitres, three vultures in
the sky. The young man, Javier Michel, is on his way to Bolivia, somewhere on a
country road. He bought the car he is driving for next to nothing in Buenos
Aires, as it's stolen, and his plan is to smuggle it across the border and sell
it on again. Javier needs money for a trip to Spain.
Arrived in Santa Cruz, Javier meets Paula. He is
fascinated by this beautiful woman, and while the city threatens to drown in
floods of rain they spend all night talking. When Paula has gone, Javier finds
more money in his rucksack than they agreed on for the car, but his passport is
missing.
He finds out about Paula's brother Ivo, who looks
rather like him. Ivo is in trouble, suspected of murdering the partner of the
head of the car-smuggling gang. The boss is Milo, Ivo's and Paula's uncle. He
has his own brother on his conscience, making orphans out of his niece and
nephew many years ago. By chance, Javier and Paula meet again. She wants to be
taken across the border illegally, and Javier agrees to take on the risk. Ivo
is already in Argentina, and Javier soon realises that he is an unstable person
incapable of committing murder, quite unlike the single-minded Paula. The
brother and sister end up arguing bitterly, Ivo insulting Paula as Milos' whore.
As they fight, her bag falls to the ground, revealing a gun. In the very end,
Javier finds Paula dead – in her bag the flower that he had given her in Santa
Cruz. Paula, driven by revenge, was not just using him after all, as the old
man with the tape recorder initially suspected.
With sleight of hand and terse language, Henry
Trujillo tells a tragic and complex family tale, the extent of which is only
revealed in the final showdown. The atmosphere is expertly depicted, marked out
by the menacing mountains of the Argentinean-Bolivian border region. The novel
draws great tension from the cleverly thought-out dosages of information and
the convincing depiction of the protagonists and their relationships.
Novels:
Torquator,
Montevideo: Banda Oriental 1993
El Vigilante,
Montevideo: Banda Oriental 1996
.
Gato que
aparece en la noche, (Torquator, El Vigilante and three stories), Montevideo: Grupo Editor 1998.
163 p.
La
Persecución, Montevideo: Banda Oriental 1999, 2nd
ed. 2008, 158 p.
Ojos de
caballo, Montevideo: Alfaguara 2003, 2nd ed.
2005, 245 p.
Tres buitres , Montevideo: Alfaguara 2007, 1st and 2nd ed., 195 p.
France: Actes Sud 2012
Stories:
El Fuego y otros relatos, Montevideo: Banda Oriental 2001.