Novel
Doña Inés vs. Oblivion
Doña Inés contra el olvido
Ana Teresa Torres · 1992
Synopsis
In Caracas, in the eighteenth century, Doña Inés, a wealthy landowner who claims descent from the first conquerors, fights relentlessly to defend lands in Barlovento, now a cacao plantation, whose title deeds have disappeared: her husband is said to have given them to Juan del Rosario, the son he had by a slave, around whom former slaves have built the village of Curiepe. Once dead, Inés goes on speaking, and her voice follows across the centuries the lawsuit of her descendants.
Context
The novel was published in 1992 in Caracas by Monte Ávila, in the Continentes series, then reissued in 1999 and in 2008 by Alfa. It questions the gap between history and memory, through a voice coming from an old house that passes through Bolívar, the dictators, earthquakes and epidemics up to the eighties of the twentieth century. Gregory Rabassa translated it into English as Doña Inés vs. Oblivion, published in New York by Grove Press; the book has not been translated into French.
Who it is for
To travel through three centuries of Venezuelan history through a single voice, that of a dead woman who refuses oblivion.
Prizes and reception
The novel won the Pegasus Prize for Literature in 1998; its English publisher sees in it a living fresco of the country's conflicts.