Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the Wo (Discoveries) [Paperback]

Francisco Coloane (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0935480501 | ISBN-13: 978-0935480504 | Publication Date: June 1991

stories, Chile, tr David A Petreman

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A blind sheep, its eyes pecked out by birds, struggles against the cold wind. The sheep will fall, and the birds will devour it. This is life for man and beast in Tierra del Fuego, "land of fire." These stories, well translated from the Spanish, describe the severe beauty and cruelty of southern Chile--cold, inhospitable, full of craggy, treacherous channels--the end of the world. One could call that environment a metaphor for the people of the region, but an abstraction does not aptly describe the brutal conjunction of man and nature in "The Kanasaka Iceberg," where sailors sight an Indian cadaver embedded atop a dangerous iceberg. As in Jack London's stories, the environment forms a crucible in which man's true--or perhaps worst--nature is revealed: two stranded lighthouse keepers fight each other as their provisions run low ("The Hen Who Laid Eggs of Light"); the skipper of a rowboat on a violent sea declines help from a ship, refusing to be listed officially as "shipwrecked" ("Gulf of Sorrows"). The collection would be worth reading just for the spectacular scenery from the tip of the world. But Coloane is also a master storyteller, distilling the universal from the extreme. Coloane's other U.S. publication is The Stowaway , a young adult novel.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Spanish

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Latin American Literary Review (June 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0935480501
• ISBN-13: 978-0935480504
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,149,365 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars A collection of stories for a different hemisphere, October 16, 1998

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This review is from: Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the Wo (Discoveries) (Paperback)

Just before the funeral for Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, Francisco Coloane walked up to the open coffin and buttoned his deceased compatriot's shirt. Such an attention to the details of human existence flow through Dave Petreman's translation of Coloane's short stories, "Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the World."

Coloane, a respected and award-winning writer in Chile whose works have been published around the world in Spanish and other languages, is introduced to a greater American readership in this collection of sixteen intense and thoughtful short stories. Petreman's translation pays homage to the language of the original stories and manages to cross the barriers that face any translator of prose and poetry.

Coloane's stories describe a world of the essentially human. He introduces us in "Cape Horn," for example, to people "whose hearts were nothing more than another clenched fist" and shows how the natural world inhabited by such people has its own way of imposing an unmerciful justice on them. The recurring theme in Latin American literature that poses commonality of civilization and barbarity forms the basis for "Gulf of Sorrows," where a small boat filled with struggling sailors prefers to head on against the storm rather than face being declared shipwrecked. In the story "Bottle of Caña" Coloane introduces the reader to the inner lives of two characters who meet and share for a while a path through the cold patagonian tundra. One of the characters is headed home to get married. The other remembers how, on the same trail a year earlier, he had killed another man just like this momentary companion. The innocent future of one man is juxtaposed with the violent past of the other, with the reader discovering in the story how closely each of us lives blissfully unaware of the violence hiding in the deepest recesses of the human heart.

It is just these collocations of opposites that make Coloane's stories so gripping and unstoppable. The fire of life and the iceberg cold of hidden death, control and violence, obstinacy and honor, plunder and compassion are part of every one of these stories. Coloane's perception of the essential relationship between the world of man and the world of nature makes each of these confrontations more than just one in another in a collection of stories. The stories present human nature as natural, the anima of compulsion and unexpected submission behind our sense of human importance.

David Petreman, associate professor of Spanish language & Latin American literature at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, translated these stories from other collections of Coloane's work previously published in Chile. Petreman, who specializes in Chilean literature, is a long-time friend of Coloane, a relationship that is evident in the careful rewriting of these stories for another hemisphere.

The stories in this book reveal a world seldom seen by English-speaking readers. This is a world of grand vistas, foot-worn trails and the encroachment of a so-called civilization. If you are searching for a world left unexplored by American literature or those who read and write it, "Cape Horn and Other Stories from the End of the World" is an excellent starting point.