Novel
La babosa
Not translated into English
Gabriel Casaccia · 1952
Synopsis
In Areguá, a resort town on the shore of Lake Ypacaraí, some twenty kilometres from Asunción, Ramón Fleitas, a country boy turned lawyer in his father-in-law's firm, dreams of being a writer and ill bears this protector. His every move, like that of the whole town, passes through doña Ángela, a pious, backbiting spinster whom the priest has nicknamed the Slug; on bad terms with her sister Clara, whom she accuses of having taken from her the man she loved and her inheritance, she spreads a rumour about Ramón and the servant Paulina.
Context
The novel was written in Argentina and appeared in 1952 in Buenos Aires, from Losada; it is the first book its author signed Gabriel Casaccia. It sets in Areguá, the town of his youth, a gallery of petty characters, which Hugo Rodríguez-Alcalá saw as the entry of antiheroes into the literature of a country devoted to the cult of heroes. Well received in Argentina, the book was attacked in Paraguay for the image it gave of the country, and was published there only after its author's death; Gallimard brought out a French translation as early as 1959.
Who it is for
A novel of medium length, with hardly a sympathetic character. The attack on the village is constant.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by the country's critics as the founding novel of modern Paraguayan narrative; translated into French as early as 1959.