Novel
Los cuatro espejos
Not translated into English
Quince Duncan · 1973
Synopsis
Charles McForbes, an Afro-Caribbean from Limón settled in San José, attends a conference on racial minorities at the National Theatre with his wife Ester, the daughter of a white doctor from the capital. The next day, he no longer sees his face in the mirror. The doctor can do nothing for him; he leaves for Estrada, his native village, then for Limón, and on the way relives his childhood, his first marriage to Lorena Sam, who died young, his affairs and the sale of the farm that led him to the capital.
Context
The novel appeared in 1973 from Editorial Costa Rica. Elena Valverde Alfaro reads the four generations of the McForbes family in it as so many mirrors of the hero's identity, and the whitening that the grandfather already advocated as the path to social recognition; Silvia Elena Solano Rivera contrasts Limón, an Afro-Caribbean and rural periphery, with a white and aristocratic capital. Dorothy Mosby places it among the novels that depict the Afro-Antillean community of Limón. H&H Editores reissued it in 2025.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, built on flashbacks that interrupt the hero's journey; no French translation.
Prizes and reception
One of the author's most acclaimed novels according to his current publisher, and one of the two retained by Dorothy Mosby's study.
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