Written in 1956, The Chase is a thrilling tale told against the backdrop of Havana in the era of Batista's violent tyranny. Carpentier tells the story of how two men (a student on the run and a ticket seller at a concert hall) find their lives and fates intertwined.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Written in 1956, this gem by a renowned Cuban novelist ( The Kingdom of This World ; The Lost Steps ) is considered by many to be an esthetic watershed in Latin American fiction. Untranslated until now, it most clearly shows his method: a suspenseful, political situation delineated in a baroque elliptical style in which the details of landscape and feeling take the foreground and create their own suspense, transforming the story, a commonplace of modern fiction, into a luxuriant tropical canvas. Here the dubious hero, a young man who in his university days participated in revolutionary activity and was caught, tortured and became a partisan of a corrupt political leader, is now being trailed by hitmen of a rival seeking to take power. His story is framed by that of a box-office clerk (an eccentric but a kind of Everyman) at the concert hall where he has taken refuge. The chase is full of the formal suspense cliches of popular fiction, and Carpentier slows it down to reach for what is the grander total view. While some of the novelists of the Latin American boom claim him, Carpentier is a magic realist but no fabulist; he is, in fact, delineating an easily recognizable event in the history of Cuba. Readers who know Havana will be able to follow the chase from block to block, but the symbolism embedded in the references to the poet Heredia and the playing at the concert hall of Beethoven's Eroica may escape many. Carpentier was often nominated for the Nobel Prize but was neglected outside the Spanish-speaking world. Now Noonday Press promises uniform paperback editions of all the novels: a real boon for lovers of fiction.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Publication of this well-wrought translation of El acoso , a 1956 work by Cuba's outstanding 20th-century writer, marks the first time that this novel has appeared in English as a separate volume. The time frame of the plot, which consists primarily of the events surrounding a ticket seller and a fugitive's seeking refuge in a concert hall, runs contemporaneously with a performance of the Eroica Symphony. Although generally recognized as one of Carpentier's masterpieces, this novella is probably one of his most inaccessible, in part because of the multiple, disjointed narrations and the polyphonic structure. One hopes that it will be appreciated by more than its guaranteed audience of literature students for whom the original Spanish version is too abstruse.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nightmares between the covers,
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This review is from: Chase (Paperback)
The Chase is a novel where the psychological plot line is equal to the narrative plot line - as the unnamed student tries to survive in a world of political intrique where he is the hunted not the hunter. Attention to detail - details that are constant varients on preceding detail - build the tension to a stunning climax.Well written and worth your attention.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic relatively unknown and under-appreciated in USA,
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This review is from: The Chase (Hardcover)
Short, atmospheric, tightly crafted, and subtle, The Chase is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and considered one of the classics of Latin American literature. Banned from publication and distribution in the United States for a few years during the cold war because its author is Cuban, it is consequently relatively unfamiliar to US readers. It is the classic that Fuentes and other Latin American authors claim to have inspired their later development of "magic realism," but isn't, in itself, really a magic realist novel, though it introduces many of the trademark literary techniques of magic realism, such as its treatment of time and history imbedded into a multi-dimensional psychologically-charged present. It is a philosophically-oriented, genre-defying tale, more in the tradition of Camus's The Stranger, structured on the surface as a thriller, but really something more nuanced, less obvious underneath. A man is being sought after by, at first, rather shadowy, unknown pursuers. As the novel progresses, we come to realize that "the chase" is really seeking deeper, less-visible prey.
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