Novel
Born Guilty
Hijo de ladrón
Manuel Rojas · 1951
Synopsis
Aniceto Hevia tells his life from the day he leaves prison, wrongly accused of a theft. The account goes back to a childhood in Buenos Aires with his mother, Rosalía, and his brothers, in the shadow of a thief father, nicknamed the Galician, whose arrests force them to move again and again. With the mother dead and the father sentenced, the brothers scatter; Aniceto wanders from town to town and from job to job, crosses into Chile and ends up without papers in Valparaíso, where he is arrested in the middle of a riot. His memory jumps from one episode to another, and the book warns that it will be long and confused.
Context
Written under the title Tiempo irremediable, the novel competed in 1950 for the prize of the Chilean Writers' Society without winning, despite Alone's defence; Nascimento published it in 1951 under the title suggested by Enrique Espinoza. Memoria Chilena sees in it the first interior monologue in Chilean narrative, and Britannica also notes the flashbacks and stream of consciousness. It opens a cycle of four novels about Aniceto Hevia, later collected in one volume. Frank Gaynor translated it into English in 1955, Robert Lorris into French in 1963.
Who it is for
A novel with a fractured chronology, which requires a little attention at the start; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
Well received by critics and the public, it earned its author lasting renown, according to Biografías y Vidas.
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