Novel
Los pantanos del infierno
Not translated into English
León Pacheco Solano · 1974
Synopsis
A novel that takes the 1934 banana plantation strike in Costa Rica as its subject. Its plot is described nowhere: the notices that cite it give only this subject and name neither its characters nor its course, and the National Library of Costa Rica, which includes its author among the hundred of its exhibition Cien novelas costarricenses, publishes no review of it.
Context
The book appeared in 1974, at the end of a body of work devoted mainly to the essay, twice crowned with the Aquileo J. Echeverría Prize for the essay, in 1965 and 1968; the second of the prize-winning books brings together three essays on foreign writers. The National Library also lists another novel by the author, which remained unpublished, Once grados latitud norte. By its subject, this novel is loosely linked to the generation of social novelists of the forties, that of Carlos Luis Fallas, Joaquín Gutiérrez and José Marín Cañas.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish about an episode in the country's labour history; neither a French translation nor a reissue has been found.
Prizes and reception
The only novel its author published, which earns him a place among the hundred Costa Rican novelists of the National Library.