Novel
The Old Man Who Read Love Stories
Un viejo que leía novelas de amor
Luis Sepúlveda · 1989
Synopsis
Antonio José Bolívar Proaño lives in El Idilio, a remote village in the Amazon of the Shuars, and knows the forest as no white man does. He reads with passion the love novels that the dentist Rubicundo Loachamín brings him twice a year. A gringo settler has killed the cubs of a female tigrillo and wounded the male; the animal now attacks men. After several deaths, the mayor, nicknamed Babosa, organises a hunt and forces the old man, the only one capable of tracking the animal, to take part.
Context
The author had lived for seven months among the Shuars with a UNESCO expedition, and the novel received the Tigre Juan prize in 1988, before being published by Júcar. The Latin America Bureau reports that it appeared first in France, where François Maspero translated it in 1992, before the Spanish edition by Tusquets in 1993, and that it made its author's international success. Rolf de Heer adapted it for the cinema in 2001. Lecturalia sees in it the forest set against greedy outsiders, armed to the teeth, who believe they dominate it.
Who it is for
A brief, fast-moving novel in simple language, often read in class; readable in French since 1992.
Prizes and reception
For Pulzo, a lesson in ecology and empathy with nature; the book made its author known throughout the world.
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