Memory of Fire
Genesis, Faces and Masks, Century of the Wind
Eduardo Galeano author Cedric Belfrage translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Publishing:1st Apr '27
£16.99
This title is due to be published on 1st April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Latin America, Eduardo Galeano believed, had been robbed twice over: of its gold and its silver, and of its memory. Memory of Fire is his answer – a blazing mosaic of five hundred years weaving together myth, memory, poetry, and storytelling – written to ‘rescue the kidnapped memory of all America’.
Vol. 1: Genesis takes us back to the start: to how time, fire, and language began, and what the hummingbird, jaguar, and tortoise meant, until Columbus steps ashore; then follows the wreckage of that mistake: Cortés burns his way into Tenochtitlán, Pizarro garrotes an Inca, and the silver mountain of Potosí devours its miners.
Vol. 2: Faces and Masks carries the story through revolutions made and revolutions betrayed – Túpac Amaru and Toussaint L'Ouverture, the slave ships, gold rushes, Bolívar, San Martín, Artigas, and the birth of multiple nations.
Vol. 3: Century of the Wind brings the twentieth century with electric light and moving pictures: Zapata and Sandino, Frida Kahlo and Che Guevara, the generals, death squads, and banana barons, completing one of the most original histories ever written.
Galeano's vision is unswerving, surgical and yet immensely generous and humane.... Eduardo Galeano ought to be a household name -- Arundhati Roy
To publish Eduardo Galeano is to publish the enemy: the enemy of lies, indifference, above all of forgetfulness. His tenderness is devastating, his truthfulness furious -- John Berger
Devastating, triumphant regeneration, sure to scorch the sensibility of English-language readers. It hopes to scandalize us into learning our sources - bibliographic and historic * New York Times *
Unquestionably Galeano’s masterwork… a kind of secret history of the Americas -- Scott Sherman * The Atlantic *
An epic work of literary creation * Washington Post *
Nothing less than a unified history of the Western Hemisphere . . . recounted in vivid prose * New Yorker *
Deeply humane . . . he has produced literature that will endure, monuments to the imagination -- Toby Green * Independent *
Galeano rivals such masters of the fable as Kafka and that other Borges * Washington Post *
One of the great writers of Latin America -- Richard Gott * Guardian *
Galeano's prose is nearly lulling in its lyricism -- Neil Gordon * New York Times Book Review *
ISBN: 9780241836705
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 55mm
Weight: 1209g
1296 pages