Novel
Assault on Paradise
Asalto al paraíso
Tatiana Lobo · 1992
Synopsis
In the early eighteenth century, Pedro Albarán reaches Cartago, capital of the colonial province, exhausted and in rags, after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Sceptical, wary of all authority and susceptible to women's charms, this picaresque hero passes through the army, the Church and the indigenous villages, takes one lover after another and witnesses the revolt led by the Talamanca chief Pabru Presbere against the Spaniards, in a town of gossip where slaves are also sold.
Context
The novel was published in 1992 by the University of Costa Rica's press, after six or seven years of research in the colonial archives. The author said she wanted to pay tribute to a friend's Bribri clan and to give back his place to Pabru Presbere, whom official history had, in her view, erased; she also brought into it the African slaves of Cartago. Only five characters are invented: the others, from the governor to the members of the town council, really existed. Asa Zatz translated it into English as Assault on Paradise, published by Curbstone in 1998; it has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
To relive life in a Spanish province at human scale, between picaresque irony and the resistance of indigenous peoples.
Prizes and reception
The book won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in Guadalajara in 1995; on its release, it had stirred fierce controversy in Costa Rica.