Novel
Trágame tierra
Not translated into English
Lizandro Chávez Alfaro · 1969
Synopsis
Plutarco Pineda, a settler from the Pacific coast, a river trader in the Mosquitia, believes in the virtues of work and dreams of the interoceanic canal that is to cross Nicaragua by way of the San Juan; he keeps the title to a plot of land for the project. His son Luciano, who has changed the first name he was given at baptism, defies him in everything and joins the guerrilla against the dictatorship. In parallel, Marcelo Barrantes confronts his son César, Plutarco's godson, whose sexual ambiguity tears the family apart. When Luciano is arrested, old Plutarco takes the plane from Bluefields to Managua to try to save him.
Context
The novel appeared in 1969 in Mexico City, from Ediciones Diógenes, and was a finalist for the Seix Barral Biblioteca Breve prize. It places at the centre of the national novel the Caribbean coast, its rivers, its trading posts and its Black, Indigenous and immigrant populations, long kept apart from the country's literature, and combines the ever-disappointed dream of an interoceanic canal with the legacy of Sandino and the first oppositions to the dictatorship. The Ministry of Culture reissued it in Managua in 1985.
Who it is for
A novel in Spanish, not translated into French, with several voices and stream of consciousness; it demands a little attention to follow its two parallel stories.
Prizes and reception
Critics regard it as Nicaragua's first modern novel, the one that made its author the founder of the country's contemporary narrative.
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