The euphoric idealism of grassroots reform and the tragic reality of revolutionary failure are at the centre of this speculative novel, which opens with a real historical event: on October 2, 1968, the Mexican police fired into a crowd of demonstrating students, killing more than 200 and wounding hundreds more. Two years later, a journalist and participant in the fateful events lies recovering in the hospital from a knife wound. His fevered imagination leads him in the collection of facts and memories of the movement and its assassination.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In 1970, recovering from a knife wound, Nestor, a journalist and partisan of the Mexican Movement of 1968, enlists his friends to help him recall the details of the protests, which culminated in the massacre of 49 students by army troops. Later, feverish from a kidney infection, Nestor calls on the heroes of his youth--Sherlock Holmes, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and D'Artagnan among them--to join him in launching a new reform movement conceived by his intensely active imagination. Taibo ( An Easy Thing ) skillfully interweaves facts and reverie in a profoundly stirring portrayal of the euphoric idealism of grassroots reform and the tragic reality of revolutionary failure. This brief, unconventional work has little narrative continuity (the story of the Movement of '68 is told by way of interviews, letters, newspaper clippings and poems) and the reader may become confused by the haphazard, impressionistic prose. Yet Taibo's writing is witty, provocative, finely nuanced and well worth the challenge.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"The real enchantment of Mr. Taibo's storytelling lies in the wild and melancholy tangle of life he sees everywhere." —New York Times Book Review
"Taibo's writing is witty, provocative, finely nuanced, and well worth the challenge." —Publishers Weekly
"I am [Taibo's] number one fan . . . I can always lose myself in one of his novels because of their intelligence and humor." —Laura Esquivel, author, Like Water for Chocolate
"Taibo's novels constitute an absurdist manifesto." —Washington Post Book World
"Taibo uses humour and an unrivalled inventiveness to shine a light onto the darkness, and the result is intoxicating, and subversive, enchantment." —The Latin American Review of Books
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
New, vastly improved translation,
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This review is from: Calling All Heroes: A Manual for Taking Power: A Novel (Found in Translation) (Paperback)
Twenty years ago, the now-defunct Plover Press published the first English translation of Paco Ignacio Taibo II's Héroes convocados (Calling All Heroes). While it was valuable to have this novel available in English in any form, the translation left much to be desired -- it was overly literal and not very attuned to the Mexican and Mexico City regionalisms of the original text. Thankfully, PM Press has reprinted this important contribution to the body of "1968 literature" in a new, greatly improved English translation by Gregory Nipper. Highly recommended for readers interested in the history of Mexican or Latin American leftism or fans of PIT II's other work (Belascoarán Shayne detective novels or his memoir '68 in particular), this is a wonderful short, experimental novel that explores one individual's response to the abrupt and violent defeat of the Mexican student-popular movement of 1968.
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