Customer Reviews

Century of the Wind (Memory of Fire Trilogy)

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As an operatic finale, "El Siglo del Viento" could stand alone as one of the greatest pieces of Latin American literature. However, it is just the last part of the "Memoria del Fuego" trilogy. This makes it a unique book, a treasure, and -personally- one that influenced the most on me. Many historians have had outstanding investigative History books on Latin America. The difference with Galeano is that he found the way to conjugate History, Poetry and Story-telling into what is a superb masterpiece. Yet, his language (and I refer now to the original, Spanish version) is plain, easy to read and so pleasing. The tragedy of Latin American History is exposed in this exquisite homage to the lost lives of many Latin Americans who believed in a better future for this region. Despite everything that has happened in Latin America since Galeano wrote this book, it is still quite fresh. The roots of disgrace and -yet- the magic greatness of Latin America are alive: misery and dignity come hand in hand, like two inseparable sibblings. However, as Galeano said, utopia is necessary... to keep us walking.

The literary world is indebted to Galeano for his
poetical honesty in articulately conveying the voice of suffering in the masses, in the few. In Century of the Wind, he speaks with fascinating brevity as he dances and intertwines the triumphs and failures of a resilient, albeit it haunted, century. Galeano's words become newspaper articles that come Alive, his charachters become colorful fragments of peace and war and love and politics, refusing to be silenced. He urges the reader to pay attention to the paradox of romancing a people whom have had chaos and horror thrust upon them. Cetury of the Wind is a pathway in which we can collectively examine the troublesome past of America and ask the next great question with some degree of vigor -- And where are we heading?

Eduardo Galeano may be the world's best living writer and thinker, and Century of the Wind may be his best book. I've not yet read his newest. But this is an extraordinary history of the western hemisphere in the 20th century, told vignette by vignette. Each paragraph is a story of its own, but they form into a moving collage that will change forever how you view the world around you.

This book was completely mesmerizing and beautiful in its portrait of human nature and the history of two continents. Galeano unfolds the story of the Americas in the 20th century with his magnificent story telling which makes the book difficult to put down or to forget. Each snipet tells of the experiences of various Americans from poor Indigeneous folk to the heads of state. I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially to people in the U.S. who should develop a better understanding of their sister countries to the south. Galeano is neither pessimist, nor optimist but rather chooses to reveal the naked reality of human experience and conduct from the most avaricious calousness to the most magnanimous heroism.

the trilogy of the americas comes to an end leaving me wishing this series could have gone on...perhaps Galeano will gifts us by making this a tetralogy by taking the books into the millenium...however here we see the owrld of the americas go through industrial transformations which turns the pristine world of the indians into a melting amalgam of cars, factories, wars, and crime...this Uruguayan writer tells history with no no pretense of his won point of view, which is very convincing if not idealistic at times...to read this book is not only to learn that there is much more to the word "america" than we think...we learn of our americas, a unique part of the world where many worlds collided and in turn, we learn of ourselves, because Galeano's vision here awakens us with his epic history inviting us to learn more.... this epic triology is still an overview that lingers in details here and there, but if you look at all the sources isted at the end of each book, you will find that this triology was more like a river leading to many seas....

Eduardo Galeano is a thrilling writer! (And very quickly one must add that his translator Cedric Belfrage is also gifted!) CENTURY OF THE WIND is a kaleidoscopic history, very much appropriately influenced by the sociopolitical beliefs of the author, of the Americas - South and North, and in that order - from the turn of the century 1900 to the last entry in this book in 1986. Reading it is an experience in history, in the fantastical events that have sprouted everywhere in every venue in a century more filled with inventions and collisions and bright lights and devastations than any preceding it.

Galeano's style is journalistic (he began his rigorous and controversial career as a journalist and editor before turning to books), and in a most readable fashion he takes us through specific events in each of the years of the 1900s and reports and comments on such divers topics as Thomas Edison, Fidel Castro, the Panama Canal, vaccinations in Brazil, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, agrarian reform, wars, revolutions, Frida Kahlo, religion, Evita, Ernest Hemingway, dictators, the Beatles, fellow authors of South America - the list is endless.

Galeano can say more in a paragraph or two than most commentators or historians can in an entire book. This is tasty writing unearthing many concepts that have passed unknown to many of us. Reading this fascinating book raises more questions than a multitude of reading groups or college courses and it is a must for the libraries of those who love to be challenged while being entertained! Highly recommended. Grady Harp, May 06

CENTURY OF THE WIND, it takes off traveling at a confidant pace in a first class train car and ends traveling around the world in the blink of an eye, with the click of a mouse, in a puff of noxious gass. The good that gave everything they had for their people; Che and Evita. The bad that bled stones to feed hungry war machines; the rubber plantation owners, the lumber companies cutting down the rainforrests. The ugly toppling and reapplying puppet goverments in a flury of laughable sterotypes; the many headed multicorporations. This whole series is a crash couse in the history of the New World without a word slanted to the Old World viewpoint. Eduardo Galeano has bit by bit, sometimes with humor, sometimes with rage, written a lyrical history that demands reading. If not for the version of history he tells, but for the beauty of his storytelling.

"Each day of life is an unrepeatable chord of a music that laughs at death." So Eduardo Galeano tells us in this, the final book of his "Memory of Fire" trilogy. The culmination of his experiment in history writing, this volume tells the history of the Western Hemisphere's 20th century in a series of vignettes that range from beautifully poetic to brain-burningly horrifying, from the torture chambers of Latin America's right-wing dictators (too often brought to you courtesy of the USA) to a little town in Central America called Yoro where, from time to time, it rains fish. You will end this book weeping with rage and joy. (And I mean that literally. This book is quite a ride.)

Eduardo Galeano's "Century of the Wind" (1988) stands on its own merits as one of the finest cultural histories ever written. From Pinochet to Presley, the author chronicles the dark undercurrents of South and North America in a compelling, cross-cutting narrative. An indispensible book that belongs in every library.

El manejo del castellano que posee Galeano es verdaderamente envidiable. Pero la saga de Memoria del Fuego no se queda en un juego de estilo: es sin duda, como dijeron algunos críticos, la biblia de América Latina. Su contenido político es fuertemente realista y esclarecedor: doloroso y revolucionario (bellamente revolucionario). La palabra que más se repite en este libro de la trilogía, El Siglo del Viento, es "marines". ¿Por qué será?

The management that Galeano has over the sapanish languaje can make anyone envious. But Memory of the Fire does not stop in a stylish game: it is, with no doubt, as some critics said, the Latin America Bible. Its political content is strongly realist and clearing: painful and revolutionary (beautifuly revolutionary The word that gets more repeated in this book form the trilogy, Century of the Wind, is "marines". ¿Why could it be?