Novel
Día tras día
Not translated into English
Miguel Donoso Pareja · 1976
Synopsis
An exile's book, almost without outward action, made up of several interwoven stories. At the centre, the relationship of a man, a young girl and a woman, under the gaze of a condor; around it, the man and Dolores, a certain N grappling with a clandestine group and then interrogated, Ligia's funeral, a telephone call. From Tepoztlán to Monte Albán and as far as the Argentine beaches of Pinamar, the places and the women loved, and first of all the distant Gudrum, answer one another as in a gallery of mirrors.
Context
The book appeared in Mexico City in 1976 from Joaquín Mortiz, during its author's exile, of which it is the novel. It is the second of his three long narratives of exile: where the first shut its man in a cell, this one seeks him outside, in memory and invention, before the account of the return. It prefers the journey to the resolution, and its construction in mirrors deliberately distorts what it shows. El Conejo reissued it in 1986 in its library of Ecuadorian literature.
Who it is for
In Spanish, never translated into French. A short narrative with no continuous plot, in which the stories answer one another: one has to accept not knowing right away who is speaking.
Prizes and reception
Ranked among the experimental novels of Ecuadorian literature; the central book of Donoso Pareja's Mexican trilogy.