Dominican Republic / All works
Novel
Escalera para Electra
Not translated into English
Aída Cartagena Portalatín · 1970
Synopsis
From Greece, Helene, an intellectual, reconstructs the life of a young woman she knew, born on a tobacco plantation in the Dominican countryside. Her father, don Plácido, a landowner in polished boots, rules over a nameless wife, and her affair with Chano, a farm labourer, unleashes his violence. The narrator often interrupts the story to speak of her own origins, and it is women who tell the story.
Context
The novel, a finalist for the Seix Barral Prize in Barcelona, dates from 1969 (from 1970 according to Acento); the publisher Taller brought it out in Santo Domingo in 1975. Linda Rodríguez Guglielmoni called it the lost text of the Latin American boom. Giovanni di Pietro, more reserved, notes that it introduced the theme of incest into the Dominican novel and finds the detour through Greek tragedy somewhat forced.
Who it is for
In Spanish; a novel of modern construction, in several voices, which asks for a reader attentive to its comings and goings.
Prizes and reception
A finalist for Seix Barral's Biblioteca Breve prize in Barcelona in 1969; Di Pietro notes that it is always cited among the country's novels by women.