Novel
El comandante
Not translated into English
Fernando Silva · 1969
Synopsis
El comandante (The Commander): on the banks of the San Juan river, in south-eastern Nicaragua, a son brings back to life his father, Francisco Silva, whom the whole river calls the Comandante. The book rests less on a plot than on the bond between father and son, and it is written, dialogue and narrative alike, in the spoken language of Nicaragua.
Context
Published in 1969, the novel was born of the years the author spent on the river at his father's side, from seven to twenty-one. The Jesuit Ángel Martínez Baigorri hailed it the same year in the review Encuentro. Reissued many times, among others in 1983 by Nueva Nicaragua and in 2007 by Hispamer, it is studied in the country's schools, and a forum was devoted to it in 2016, the year of the author's death, with Sergio Ramírez.
Who it is for
For discovering the speech of Nicaragua and the life of a great river through the portrait of a father, in Spanish.
Prizes and reception
Ángel Martínez Baigorri sees in it a book with no plot other than its two figures, and compares it to Cervantes.
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