Novel
Manuela
Not translated into English
Eugenio Díaz · 1858
Synopsis
A young scholar from Bogotá, won over to liberal ideas, withdraws to a parish in the hot lowlands to write and observe the customs of the country. There he finds Manuela, a peasant woman whom the local notable pursues with his attentions and who does not yield, and Dámaso, the labourer she loves. Around them, elections, debts, the priest and armed bands take turns laying down the law. The visitor believes it will be enough to explain people's rights to them; the young woman knows what it costs to stand up to whoever owns the land.
Context
Publication began in the first issue of El Mosaico, in 1858, and stopped at the eighth chapter: Vergara y Vergara relates that the author refused to copy out his messy manuscripts. The whole text did not appear in his lifetime: a collection of sketches of manners included it in 1866, and Garnier then published it on its own, in two volumes, in Paris in 1889. His contemporaries reproached him for the spoken language he gives his characters and praised his depiction of the countryside. Today it is read as a document on elections, credit and agricultural labour in New Granada in the middle of the century.
Who it is for
A long novel in Spanish, with no French translation, written in a strongly marked peasant language. The episodes follow one another slowly and the politics of 1850 is everywhere: one comes to it for the picture it gives.
Prizes and reception
Hailed as the national novel by the critics of its time, it is regarded today as the best Colombian novel before María.