Short stories
Cartucho
Nellie Campobello · 1931
Synopsis
Short accounts, seen and told by a little girl in northern Mexico, in Parral and its surroundings, at the time when Pancho Villa's men and Carranza's men are contesting the region. Soldiers pass in the street and through her mother's house; she remembers their name, their bearing, a word, then the moment of their death, often before the wall opposite. The book is divided into three parts, “Hombres del Norte”, “Los fusilados” and “En el fuego”, and opens on a soldier who does not give his name.
Context
The book was published in 1931 in Xalapa, the first title of Germán List Arzubide's Ediciones Integrales, who wrote its preface; it then contained thirty-three stories and went almost unnoticed. The author took it up again in 1940 and expanded it to fifty-six stories, softening its style, under the influence, it is said, of Martín Luis Guzmán; a third edition followed in 1960. An English translation appeared in 1988. Its reputation as a major text of the revolution was established only in the last decades of the twentieth century.
Who it is for
About a hundred pages of stories of a few lines each, to be read in order or not; no French translation found.
Prizes and reception
One of the few accounts of the Mexican Revolution written by a woman who lived through it, regarded today as one of its major texts.
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