Short stories
El occiso
Not translated into English
María Virginia Estenssoro · 1937
Synopsis
Three stories, "El occiso", "El cascote" and "El hijo que nunca fue", in a fragmentary writing that can also be read as a poem. In the title story, a man goes on perceiving the world after his death and describes, from inside his corpse, his own decomposition. In a voice that seems autobiographical, the collection also tells of an affair outside marriage and a voluntary abortion, and explores women's desire and subjectivity, motherhood and the gothic.
Context
The book appeared in 1937, in a Bolivia marked by the Chaco War; it sold very quickly, without anyone then discussing its literary qualities, and became an accursed book for its author. Long forgotten, it has returned with recent reissues, from Dum Dum in Santa Cruz and then, in 2022, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, with an introduction by Liliana Colanzi, and the first story has entered the anthology Vindictas. It has not been translated into French; no English translation could be verified.
Who it is for
To discover the Bolivian avant-garde through a woman's voice which dared, as early as the thirties, to write of death, love outside marriage and abortion.
Prizes and reception
Eduardo Mitre considers the text the most enigmatic in Bolivian literature; Virginia Ayllón sees it as a founding stone.