Customer Reviews

Las batallas en el desierto (Spanish Edition)

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En muy pocas páginas, Pacheco nos cuenta la historia de México en los años 50 por los ojos de Carlos, un hombre quién está recordando su adolesencia en la Colonia Roma, D.F. En este bildungsroman, encontramos de nuevo el primer amor y la entrada al mundo adulto, un mundo en que uno se lucha contra la perdición.

This is a moving and amazing novella of a young boy growing up in Mexico City in the 1950's and his and the purity of emotion.

It is a reminiscence, but related through the first person eyes and point of view of its young narrator. His amalgam of wide-eyed-ness as well as some unexpected realistic judgment, intermingled with the slightest underlying touch of the sardonic as he encounters situations both mundane and some of those singular ones that we've all had render it both an interesting and often fun read.

There are many wonderful, complex aspects of the novella in its portrayals of the US dominance over Mexico, both cultural and economic, political corruption at home, class differences from the very poor to the very rich, and, even from the point of literary theory(!), how the narrator's adult viewpoint is subtly insinuated in a key event.

But riding above all this is the pureness of emotion, even as the Mexico of his childhood disappears.

It concludes with a terrific last line, both simple and yet so heartfelt. It will remain with me a long time.

I can't too highly recommend it.

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Note: I had never heard of this author, but we had to read this book for my Spanish class. The Spanish is pretty easy (it is expressed more or less through the eyes of a boy, after all). True, there was a good dose of slang, including some groserias, that somehow never made it into any of my stilted textbooks. I think an excellent translation by nearly anyone who knows what they're doing (that's not me!) would be easy, which I mention because there is an English language edition, Battles in the Desert and Other Stories, which, obviously, also includes other stories by the author.

The book can be read in about an hour and a half, so it's really short. The storytelling in this short read, however, is magnificient. The histoire and recit is not complex at all, letting the reader immerse him/herself into the themes of the book. You'll fall in love with some of the characters, and Carlitos will probably remind you of yourself when you were a child.

Tuve que leer este libro para una clase de espanol. En realidad es corto y facil de leer (y analizar); no obstante, me gusto mucho. Se lo recomiendo para una clase o para leerlo para diversion.

I ordered this book for my Spanish literature class which focuses on the move towards modernity in Mexico City. Though it was a required book, the read is easy to follow and quite comical at times because of it's narrator who recounts his childhood, in particular, his love for the mother of his friend, Jim. I recommend this book for people who are just getting into Spanish books and want a story that is easy to read and entertaining.