The Master Of Fate is a coming of age novel of a different sort. It is not about the building of chacter but about its erosion. It is not about the traumatic experiences that the protagonist must learn from as a part of growing up, but about the accumulation of small events and pressures that result in the unraveling of a life. Oscar grows up in Bogata, Columbia, a youth of intellect and ambition from a middle-class family. But social corruption, most notably the anti-Semitism that even the "best people" accept as a fact of life, and political and economic corruption, shown in part by the portrayal of the machinations in the system of higher education, through their affects on Oscar and his family act to thwart his ambition and turn his intellect in upon itself. Both existential and realistic, The Master of Fate is reminiscent of Sarte's early post-war stories.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Oscar Moreira, the narrator of this unsparing coming of age novel, is a privileged Colombian adolescent boarding at a wealthy Catholic school in Bogot . Class divisions are strong and evident in Latin America, and powerfully shape Oscar's late 1950s world. His beautiful mother and successful father live in the rich Bocagrande neighborhood of Cartegena, just a short distance away from miserable slums that everyone ignores. Oscar's worries are not about food and clothing, but about God and sexuality. Father Jorge, at school, counsels him on both issues, although he winds up piquing, rather than subduing, Oscar's curiosity about onanistic functions. The secure framework of the teenager's life starts to warp when his parents move back to Bogot . Signs of downward mobility begin to avalanche when his father's business investments fail, and Oscar and his brother, Homero, soon become targets of their father's frustration. Tuition is paid late, the maid goes without her wages and the quality of family meals becomes, to Oscar's taste, shabby. The choleric Mr. Moreira seems to delight in picking on Oscar, while Oscar's mother strains to keep the peace. When his expectations of attending an elite Colombian university are dashed, Oscar instead enrolls in La Nacional, whose student body is largely working class, mostly Indian students. He angers his parents by signing up for physics, which forfeits his scholarship. All along, Oscar is anxiously exploring his sexuality while coping with his domestic and academic problems. He becomes alienated from his schoolmates, and his interest in his studies flags; after his father dies, Oscar must come to terms with his failures while attempting to reimagine his future. Colombian academic Munevar's (Radical Knowledge) debut novel is lively with the often stunningly blunt dialogue of teenagers exchanging boasts and sexual secrets, while Oscar's inner life registers as an uncompromising study of the psychological origins of resentment. (Jan.) FYI: Black Heron Press selected The Master of Fate as winner of its 1999 Award for Social Fiction.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
A coming-of-age debut, set largely in Bogot , and winner of the Black Heron Press Award for Social Fiction, by a scholar and academic whose specialty is the philosophy of science. Oscar Moreira, nearly 14, is a brilliant lad, the top student and master of his fate at his Catholic boarding school, but bit by bit he falls to pieces. The opening chapters show him and his younger brother, Homero, at school and the social effects of masturbation upon his fellow classmates, who are under the moral thumb of authoritarian Spanish priests. When Oscars fathers petrochemical company goes bankrupt, the family must move from beautiful Cartagena on the Caribbean coast to a small house in a hateful neighborhood in damned Bogot , where people speak in a grimy accent. Oscar enjoys baiting his mentors about God, his atheism keeping pace with his fading grades. He gets frisky with the girls and pursues his passion for soccer. With no money coming in, the family descends from the gentry into the middle classFather sells the new station wagon and buys a cheap Chevrolet, while Mother pawns the silver tea service to put food on the table. And now Oscar lusts for his sister, Dora. The story, such as it is, covers four years as the Moreiras fortunes wear thinner and thinner, and Oscars studies go downhill, in part because his father wont buy him the necessary texts. Oscar's reading of science fiction, though, has led him into the study of physics, despite being bookless. It gives nothing away to tell that at last his father dies, Oscar flunks out entirely, and goes back to Cartagena . . . in the rain. Decently written but more of a memoir than a novel, with the general mental chaos of adolescence more strongly drawn than any suspense. There will, no doubt, be follow-ups. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Unique original, psychology/philosophical coming of age tale,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Master of Fate, The (Hardcover)
The Master Of Fate is a unique, original, psychological and philosophical coming-of-age novel that is about the erosion of character, the accumulation of events and pressures that unravel a life. Oscar is a youth of intellect and ambition growing up in Bogota, Colombia. However, social corruption (notably demonstrated by the anti-Semitism that even the "best people" accept as a fact of life), economic, and political corruption act to thwart this young man's ambitions and turn his intellect in on itself. Gonzalo Munevar is a novelist, poet and literary critic whose technical skills and originality place him among the first rank of contemporary writers.
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