THE OLD GRINGO by Carlos Fuentes: The American journalist and literary writer Ambrose Bierce traveled to Mexico toward the close of 1913, at the height of the Mexican Revolution, and disappeared a short while later. Carlos Fuentes imagines the events of Bierce’s final days in The Old Gringo, a novel which became a surprise bestseller (and later a film) after its translation into English. Fuentes constructs an anguished, peculiar love triangle around the figures of Bierce, an American school-teacher named Harriet Winslow, and General Tomás Arroyo of the rebel army. The rich, Faulknerian prose sometimes gets too soupy in the widely available Margaret Sayers Peden translation, but the psychological intensity of the work makes for compelling reading.
THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES by Roberto Bolaño: This vibrant novel has been available in English translation for only a few months, but already critics are acknowledging it as a modern-day classic of Latin American literature. The Savage Detectives traces the lives and times of two fringe poets, Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, over a period of almost twenty years. The epic sweep of Bolaño’s work is breath-taking, as the story is filtered through the perspective of dozens of narrators, and transpires over four continents. His protagonists move from literary concerns to petty crime to romance or narcotics, but embark on their most unsettling vision quest when they decide to seek out a missing poet from the 1920s.
FICCIONES by Jorge Luis Borges: Before Márquez and Llosa, the reigning monarch of Latin American fiction was Jorge Luis Borges, one of the finest modern writers to be denied the Nobel Prize in literature (a distinction he shares with Proust, Joyce, Kafka and Nabokov, by the way). Borges’ richly imaginative fictions would help inspire the magical realism of the next generation of South American authors, and establish the author as one of the most distinctive short story stylists of his day. His works evoke an almost paradoxical blend of fantasy and philosophy, intellectual rigor and child-like play. His brief volume Ficciones is an excellent way to make a first acquaintance with the world of Borges.
DON QUIXOTE by Miguel de Cervantes: No reading list of Hispanic literature is complete without this life-affirming classic, one of those books you can return to again and again without exhausting its riches. After reading Don Quixote, you will no longer think that the experimental novel is a recent invention. Cervantes plays with all of the conventions of story-telling, even inserting characters in the second half of the novel who have read the earlier portions. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are timeless figures, the episodes are memorable and full of rich implications, and the language and proverbs have influenced a wide sweep of later literature. This is a book all should read. I especially recommend the Samuel Putnam translation for its smooth and stylish prose.
Article comments
1 - Amanda Bittle
I loved The House on Mango Street when I was in school!
I'll have to check out some of those other titles, too.
Incidentally, I learned in Journalism History this semester that Mexico City was the home of the first North American printing press. Folks were mass-producing Spanish-language works for 100 years before the technology came to the future United States. Kinda cool.
2 - Tom
You forgot Julio Cortazar, the best of all. I'd pick Blow-Up and Other Stories.
3 - Jay Ray Ryan
I love people who make Top 10 lists, but it seems to me that any list that contains THREE works by the same person is just unfathomable. No Isabel Allende? And honestly, LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE seems lightweight, but there's depth amongst all the dishes. But I will give you tons of credit for recommending THE STORYTELLER--excellent choice.