Novel
Alsino
Pedro Prado · 1920
Opening lines
La noche cubre los campos como un agua oscura y sutil.
Night covers the fields like dark and subtle water.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from memoriachilena.gob.cl
Synopsis
Alsino, a poor child from the Chilean countryside who lives with his grandmother, dreams only of flying. He throws himself from the top of a tree, and the fall leaves him hunchbacked; then the points of his hump grow and become wings. He returns to his dying grandmother, who dies taking him for an angel, and he flies away before the eyes of the animals and the peasants. According to the journal Atenea, drunken policemen arrest him as he steals hens, and don Javier, the master of a hacienda, thinks of exhibiting him to pay off his debts.
Context
The author finished the book on 29 September 1920 and published it shortly afterwards, subtitled “Poema novelesco”. Set in the Chilean countryside, it stands apart from criollismo through its mixture of realism and fantasy; the magazine Zig-Zag then judged it perhaps the most original in the Spanish language. Alfonso Leng drew a symphonic poem from it in 1922, La muerte de Alsino. Miguel Littín adapted it for the cinema in 1982, and Guillermo Castillo-Feliú translated it into English in 1995.
Who it is for
A narrative in poetic prose, between fable and rural novel; translated into English, not into French.
Prizes and reception
Gabriela Mistral compared it to the great books for young readers; the criticism of 1920 was favourable to it, according to Memoria Chilena.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.