Voices of Time: A Life in Stories [Hardcover]

Eduardo Galeano (Author), Mark Fried (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2006

A striking mosaic of memories, observations, and legends that together reveal the author's own story and a grand, compassionate vision of life itself

In this kaleidoscope of reflections, renowned South American author Eduardo Galeano ranges widely, from childhood to love, music, plants, fear, indignity, and indignation. In the signal style of his bestselling and much-admired Memory of Fire trilogy--brief fragments that build steadily into an organic whole--Galeano offers a rich, wry history of his life and times that is both calmly philosophical and fiercely political.

Beginning with blue algae, the earliest of life forms, these 333 vignettes alight on the Galeano family's immigration to Uruguay in the early twentieth century, the fate of love letters intercepted by a military dictatorship, abuses by the rich and powerful, the latest military outrages, and the author's own encounters with all manner of living matter, including generals, bums, dissidents, soccer stars, ducks, and trees. Out of these meditations emerges neither anger nor bitterness, but a celebration of a blessed life in a harsh world.

Poetic and passionate, scathing and lyrical, delivered with Galeano's inimitable mix of gentle comedy and fierce moral judgment, Voices of Time is a deeply personal statement from a great and beloved writer.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

This Uruguayan writer has a way of producing stories reminiscent of folktales, testimonials, and reflections, and of stitching them together into vast historical tapestries, a technique seen to greatest effect in his trilogy "Memory of Fire." The current collection, subtitled "A Life in Stories," includes excursions into the Mayan concept of time, Peruvian cave paintings, and child laborers in Pakistan, and features walk-on appearances by Hernán Cortés, Diego Maradona, and Michael Jackson. Galeano can be fierce and defiant, as when he inveighs against the I.M.F., the World Bank, and assorted dictators, but there is always something celebratory to his style. Evoking the call of poets and singers, and the mysterious voices of wind, moon, trees, and dreams, Galeano remains, first and foremost, a wonder-struck raconteur.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Review

"Whimsical, poignant, moving fiestas that skip through decades, even centuries, to gather up the far-flung voices of dictators and militants, exiles and immigrants, tango singers, soccer players, and writer friends, not to mention the testimonies of trees, rivers, and wind."--Vanity Fair

 

"Eduardo Galeano is one of South America's most distinguished literary figures."--The Washington Post
 
"Evoking the call of poets and singers, and the mysterious voices of wind, moon, trees, and dreams, Galeano remains, first and foremost, a wonder-struck raconteur."--The New Yorker
 
"Voices of Time consists of three hundred and thirty-three . . . electrical charges, occasions of wonderment, lessons in fraternity . . . There are birdsongs, Beethoven's electricity, and, of course, Eduardo Galeano, who is a fiesta."--The Nation

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (May 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805077677
• ISBN-13: 978-0805077674
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,043,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modest but Winning, June 21, 2006

By 

Bartolo (New York City, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Voices of Time: A Life in Stories (Hardcover)

Eduardo Galeano's lyrical and poetic literary style floats like a butterfly; when his subjects are the political and social outrages of history, it can also sting like a bee. In his earlier works this combination is extremely potent: one is given one's historical instruction in small but powerful installments, always keyed to the individual, close to the ground, intimate. Then all the more memorable for their emotional wallop. When his subjects are the powerful and unscrupulous, Galeano knows how to draw blood, but in the courtliest way, with surgical precision and surprise.

Most of the small narratives (some only a paragraph) in "Voices of Time" show us Galeano at his gentlest. Like Borges he's an ironist, the significances and twists and turns in his tales giving heft to their brevity. A few detail the trademark social and economic outrages that comprised the history of Latin America and the Third World generally, but many involve Galeano's friends, pets, family, non-political occurences and observations. If you remember Paul Harvey's short radio biographies (revealing the name of his subject only in the last sentence), you'll have an idea of a favorite Galeano technique.

If you've never read Galeano before, I'd recommend his earlier books over this one, "Upside Down" or "Century of the Wind;" you'll then see why he's considered one of Latin America's greatest journalist-historians. But if you're a Galeano fan and are wondering whether this volume is worthwhile, please consider this a rave. "Voices of Time" is a modestly scaled work, grandfatherly in tone, but given its intentions, perfect.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful and lyrical book, July 7, 2006

By 

Pauls Toutonghi (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Voices of Time: A Life in Stories (Hardcover)

Eduardo Galeano is possibly one of the most important writers working in today's marketplace. His committments to idealogical matters, his belief in poetry, his unique narrative voice, his willingness to speak out again oppression -- all of these make him a strong and vital writer.

His prose is tremendous. Buy this book! Then, buy the Book of Embraces, Memory of Fire, and Soccer in Sun and Shadow. I've loved his work for years, and every new book is a joy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Further Ruminations by Uruguay's Galeano, July 8, 2006

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Voices of Time: A Life in Stories (Hardcover)

For readers who bask in the repeated perusals of Eduardo Galeano's books, such as the endlessly entertaining and informing 'Centuries of the Wind', then buying and reading 'Voices in Time: A Life in Stories' will come as no surprise. Galeano's Spanish thoughts are beautifully translated by Mark Fried and as is the case in all translations of books of other languages, the translator owns a significant portion of the success of the book.

Galeano continues his idiosyncratic manner of writing in brief bits and pieces of thoughts, responses, fits of anger, musings on beauty, and responses to the world in which we struggle to live. The short 'stories' contained in this volume began as newspaper quips and the 'VOICES OF TIME' is more a compendium of various excerpts rather than a novel. Galeano writes with mischief, humor, rancor, anger, and philosophical views about subjects that range form global importance such as the war in Iraq, the vanishing species of our planet, of poets (Isaac Asimov and Rafael Alberti) and of family and friends.

At times the brevity of Galeano's style can become annoying (there are 333 stories in this book of almost the same number of pages!), and the quality of what he has to contribute on his subjects varies from invigorating to dull excesses. But for those who love Galeano's lyrical style of dropping petals on the surface of the pond that serves as the matrix for thought, VOICES OF TIME will not disappoint. Not as strong as his previous work, perhaps, but even mediocre Galeano is a treat! Grady Harp, July 06