A century passed between the birth of Flora Tristán and the death of her grandson, the great painter Paul Gauguin. They never met, but both dreamed, each in their own way, with a better world. With this novel we get to know these two great personalities that had similar characteristics: an impressive stubbornness and a bulletproof determination and motivation.
Description in Spanish:
La historia de Flora Tristán y la de su nieto, el gran pintor Paul Gauguin. Entre el nacimiento de la abuela y la muerte de su nieto ha pasado exactamente un siglo, el XIX. No llegaron a conocerse; Paul nació cuatro años después de la muerte de Flora, pero ambos soñaron, cada uno a su manera, con un mundo mejor. Flora buscó y luchó por una sociedad más justa. Paul, que no era tan altruista, buscó una perfección de tipo artístico, una sociedad en la que la belleza no fuera sólo patrimonio del arte y de los artistas, que fuera una realidad a la que todos tuvieran acceso. La abuela y el nieto tenían unas características similares: una terquedad impresionante y una voluntad a prueba de balas. Por eso eran personajes extraordinarios.
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. In 1958 he earned a scholarship to study in Madrid, and later he lived in Paris. His first story collection, The Cubs and Other Stories, was published in 1959. Vargas Llosa's reputation grew with the publication in 1963 of The Time of the Hero, a controversial novel about the politics of his country. The Peruvian military burned a thousand copies of the book. He continued to live abroad until 1980, returning to Lima just before the restoration of democratic rule.
A man of politics as well as literature, Vargas Llosa served as president of PEN International from 1977 to 1979, and headed the government commission to investigate the massacre of eight journalists in the Peruvian Andes in 1983.
Vargas Llosa has produced critical studies of García Márquez, Flaubert, Sartre, and Camus, and has written extensively on the roots of contemporary fiction. For his own work, he has received virtually every important international literary award. Vargas Llosa's works include The Green House (1968) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1975), about which Suzanne Jill Levine for The New York Times Book Review said: "With an ambition worthy of such masters of the 19th-century novel as Balzac, Dickens and Galdós, but with a technical skill that brings him closer to the heirs of Flaubert and Henry James . . . Mario Vargas Llosa has [created] one of the largest narrative efforts in contemporary Latin American letters." In 1982, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to broad critical acclaim. In 1984, FSG published the bestselling The War of the End of the World, winner of the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta was published in 1986. The Perpetual Orgy, Vargas Llosa's study of Flaubert and Madame Bovary, appeared in the winter of 1986, and a mystery, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, the year after. The Storyteller, a novel, was published to great acclaim in 1989. In 1990, FSG published In Praise of the Stepmother, also a bestseller. Of that novel, Dan Cryer wrote: "Mario Vargas Llosa is a writer of promethean authority, making outstanding fiction in whatever direction he turns" (Newsday).
In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of his native Peru. In 1994, FSG published his memoir, A Fish in the Water, in which he recorded his campaign experience. In 1994, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and, in 1995, the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded to writers whose work expresses the idea of the freedom of the individual in society. In 1996, Death in the Andes, Vargas Llosa's next novel, was published to wide acclaim. Making Waves, a collection of his literary and political essays, was published in 1997; The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, a novel, was published in 1998; The Feast of the Goat, which sold more than 400,000 copies in Spanish-language, was published in English in 2001; The Language of Passion, his most recent collection of nonfiction essays on politics and culture, was published by FSG in June 2003. The Way to Paradise, a novel, was published in November 2003; The Bad Girl, a novel, was published in the U.S. by FSG in October, 2007. His most recent novel, El Sueño del Celta, will be published in 2011 or 2012. Two works of nonfiction are planned for the near future as well.
This review is from: El Paraíso en la otra esquina (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)
No debe ser fácil ser Vargas Llosa, mal acostumbrando a sus lectores a escribir excelentes novelas, de esas que cada vez que las cerramos nos decimos: "He aquí al mejor escritor de nuestra era"; no, no debe ser fácil porque cuando escribe un libro tedioso como El Paraíso en la otra esquina, la desilución del libro que pudo haber sido y no fue es demasiado grande, quizás porque las expectativas de sus lectores así lo son. El Paraíso en la otra esquina trata dos historias alternas: la de Paul Gauguin, el pintor que renunció a una cómoda vida burguesa europea para irse a pintar nativas al Pacífico, y la de su abuela Floria Tristán, incorruptible mujer de grandes ideales. Sólo de leer la contraportada se nos hace agua la boca, qué puede fallar en una novela con unos personajes tan apasionantes en la pluma del autor de La Fiesta del Chivo y Lituma en los Andes, para no irnos más atrás a sus obras maestras de juventud; cómo no devorar palabra por palabra lo que debería ser un festín literario... y nos encontramos con una obra plana, repetitiva, tediosa y desigual. Después de dos capítulos la historia de Flora Tristán daba la vuelta sobre sí misma, nos dejaron de importar sus andanzas, queríamos que terminará de una vez para saber sobre su nieto y sus llagas, sus correrías tras las niñas nativas, su orgía con los colores del Pacífico; pero ni siquiera la vida del rebelde Gauguin nos logra apasionar. Para mi esta novela es mucha información, muchos datos, pero poco corazón.
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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsDe lo mejor de Vargas Llosa, June 6, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: El Paraíso en la otra esquina (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)
Es increible como Vargas Llosa te lleva atraves del espacio y el tiempo saltando de parrafo en parrafo y el lector no se pierde nunca! Flora esta en Paris reunida con obreros y un instante despues (10 anhos antes) en Arequipa visitando a su tio Pio, Gauguin esta Tahiti, 50 anhos despues, y en la linea siguiente esta (otros 10 anhos antes)pintando con van Gogh en Arles, y lector ve pasar todo esto frente a si sin confundir una sola idea. El manejo de los tiempos es similar a Pulp Fiction, donde Tarantino te va ofreciendo escenas de la historia en desorden, pero nunca te pierdes.
Adicionalmente, el tema de las historias, el humor, y lo crudo de algunas escenas (tipo el capitulo final de "La fiesta del Chivo") hacen que este libro asuste y encante. En este libro el capitulo final es tambien fenomenal.
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This review is from: El Paraíso en la otra esquina (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)
This may be the crowning achievement of one of the foremost authors in the Spanish language. Alternating between the impressionist Gauguin and his maternal grandmother, Flora Tristan, the author traces the careers of these legendary 19th century figures. For Gauguin, the paradise was to be found in escaping the constraints of Euro-Christian civilization by fleeing further and further into the primative cultures of the South Seas. His grandmother too chaffed and strained under the constraints of French and Peruvian societies. The former would relegate her to the status of chattel to her husband, the latter offered her refuge as a virtual princess among her father's family who were as near to Peruvean royalty as was possible. Rejecting both, she chose instead to campaign for the liberation women, then the working classes through social political reform. Both characters died struggling, neither achieving the acceptance of their contemporaries; each sanguine in the choices s/he had made.
The writing is brilliant, the story riveting. The work is clearly superior to "La Fiesta del Chivo" that the "New York Times" predicted would gain Vargas a Nobel Prize for Literature.
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