Short stories
Subida al cielo y otros cuentos
Not translated into English
Roberto Castillo · 1980
Synopsis
The author's first collection of short stories. In the title story, an entire village sets off, dressed as if for a festival, towards a promised paradise; crossing a river serves as a collective baptism. But burned villages and soldiers' gunfire appear along the way, and the journey tips from utopia into the all too real violence of Honduras in the seventies.
Context
The collection appeared in 1980 and opens a body of short fiction continued with Figuras de agradable demencia, Traficante de ángeles and La tinta del olvido, alongside novels such as La guerra mortal de los sentidos. The story "Subida al cielo" was reprinted in 1997 in Madrid, by Castalia, in the anthology El cuento hispanoamericano en el siglo XX, edited by Fernando Burgos. The book has been translated into neither French nor English.
Who it is for
To read, between carnival and nightmare, the political violence of Central America from the pen of a storytelling philosopher.
Prizes and reception
On his death, the critic Hernán Antonio Bermúdez hailed Castillo as an indispensable voice of Honduran literature.