Novel
Frutos de mi tierra
Not translated into English
Tomás Carrasquilla · 1896
Opening lines
Por la puerta que comunica el cuarto del zaguán, con los corredores del patio, salió Agustín Alzate, en camiseta y arrastrando desaforadamente las chancletas de tapiz.
Through the door that connects the room off the entrance hall with the corridors of the patio came Agustín Alzate, in his vest, wildly dragging his carpet slippers along.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from archive.org
Synopsis
In Medellín, two stories advance side by side. The elder Alzates, Agustín and his sister Filomena, keep a shop and have grown rich through savings that have turned into miserliness; their two younger sisters, Belarmina and Nieves, reduced to unpaid servants, the house, the poor neighbours they despise, all is material for gossip in a neighbourhood that watches everything. Alongside, Martín Gala, a rich and idle young man, has set his mind on winning Pepa Escandón, the most beautiful girl of the place, who keeps him pining for her own pleasure. A visitor from Bogotá passes through both stories and finds everything local backward.
Context
The book was born of a discussion at the literary circle of Medellín, where it was argued that the provinces supplied no material for the novel: the author set out to prove the contrary, and travelled to Bogotá in 1896 to have it printed there, at forty-five centavos a copy. The critics gave it an excellent welcome. During that stay he was introduced to the poet José Asunción Silva, and found him stiff; yet years later he would devote an essay to him.
Who it is for
Four hundred pages in Spanish, with no French translation, in a local idiom dense with turns of phrase that the editions annotate. Two alternating plots, of which the second is the easier to approach.
Prizes and reception
First novel by its author and a founding piece of Colombian regional realism: it won the bet that had made him write it and founded a school, Antioquian realism, which other novelists of the region followed.