Novel
Mamita Yunai
Not translated into English
Carlos Luis Fallas · 1941
Synopsis
The narrator, an election supervisor for the Bloc of Workers and Peasants, leaves for the Talamanca region to find the Amure polling station and prevent fraud there. By train and then by tractor, he crosses the banana-growing zone of the American fruit company, with its Black workers, its company stores and its police, accompanied by a police officer, a planter and a detective working for the company.
Context
The book expands a series of chronicles published from 16 March 1940 in Trabajo, the Communist organ, about an electoral mission to Talamanca. Submitted the same year to the competition for the best Latin American novel, it was set aside by the Costa Rican jury, which did not regard it as a novel, and appeared in 1941 in San José. Pablo Neruda made it known outside the country; it was translated into Italian, Russian, Polish, German, Czech, Slovak and Romanian, then into French in 1964 by Julian Garavito. Cátedra published a critical edition in 2023.
Who it is for
A first-person account, in Spanish, between chronicle and novel; a French translation appeared in 1964.
Prizes and reception
The best-known work of an author whom the National Library regards as one of the most emblematic of the country; translated into about ten languages.