Short stories
Ojo por diente
Not translated into English
Rubén Bareiro Saguier · 1971
Synopsis
Ojo por diente (An Eye for a Tooth): eleven stories set in a never-named country, made of riverside villages, ranchos and scrubland. Some return to childhood memories, others show repression, the arbitrariness of judges and notables, interrogations. Guarani surfaces in the dialogues and in the figures of myth, the jaguar or the kurupí, and irony, humour and lyricism mingle in a spare writing.
Context
The collection received in 1971 the Casa de las Américas Prize, in the short-story category. It appeared first in French the same year, under the title Pacte du sang, in the translation of Anne-Marie Métailié for Éditions du Cerf, then in Spanish in Caracas from Monte Ávila; the Padilla affair delayed the Cuban edition. Plaza & Janés took it up in Barcelona in 1985 and Servilibro in Asunción in 2012, with a prologue by Ana Pizarro. Renée Ferrer ranks the author among the narrators of exile and compares his use of Guarani to that of Rulfo and Arguedas.
Who it is for
For reading, in French or Spanish, Paraguayan stories in which childhood and repression intersect.
Prizes and reception
The Havana jury hailed a book that combines poetry and formal achievement with sustained quality.
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